Mike and Kevin talk about the value of your time and setting priorities as an ecommerce influencer, the reward of being able to help other people out, and what the endgame is for recognized personalities in this space. 

Being a recognized personality in ecommerce takes a toll, whether it be on your time, your energy, or even just struggling to manage your relationships with people. In this episode, we’ll talk all about the value of amplifying your time as an ecommerce influencer, why we do what we do, and where this niche industry is heading—joining me for this one is a legend in the space, Kevin King. 

Kevin is a highly regarded figure in the ecommerce ecosystem who’s built a solid following for things like the Freedom Ticket Course and the Billion Dollar Seller Summit. He is also now the host of the AM/PM Podcast, which is among the best listens I can recommend to ecommerce sellers of all stripes. 

Timestamps:

• The value of multiplying your time as an ecommerce influencer – 0:55
• How I handle ecommerce consulting requests and other gigs – 5:30
• Some perks and struggles of being recognized by people – 6:49
• The rewards of helping ecommerce sellers and making a difference – 10:44
• Kevin’s experiences as a well-known figure in ecommerce – 13:05
• What’s the ideal endgame for ecommerce influencers? – 15:10
• How Amazon and the ecommerce industry in general is shifting  – 20:24
• Why government intervention is good for Amazon sellers – 24:55
• What made Mike decide to move to Vegas – 28:06
• What the Billion Dollar Seller Summit is all about – 30:15
• How to get a hold of a replay package from the Summit – 39:44
• Growing a podcast in the ecommerce space – 42:18

I want to thank Kevin for taking the time to do this episode with me and giving some invaluable insights all of us can reflect on. Check out some of the awesome stuff he’s doing below:

• The Freedom Ticket
• Billion Dollar Seller Summit
• AM/PM Podcast

That’s it for this episode. Happy selling and we’ll talk to you soon! 

"I loved my job when I worked as a VA for Mike and he really made me feel like I was part of the company even though I was here in the Philippines. So I guess what I'm trying to say is to have a Mia and to have a team like what we have in Cebu, you need to be a Mike." - Mia Pamisa, Philippines Team Manager, Terran

If you've been listening to our podcast for a while now you know that we run multiple brands simultaneously and it's no secret that a vital part of our growth and keeping things together is our Philippines team. I've been mentioning them on the podcast and we get asked a lot how we put together such a great team. If you're serious about developing a virtual team, this episode is for you.

During our trip to China, we went over to the Philippines to personally meet with our team there. This episode was recorded with me, my wife Michelle, our Director of Ecommerce Jacqueline, and the entire team in one room. It's refreshing to be able talk to them in person and not just on Skype.

We went around the room and introduced every single member of the team and what they do for us. We also talked about a bunch of other things including:

• How we started our team
• How we found Mia, our first VA, the one who made everything else possible
• Challenges of a content writer not based in the US but with a US audience, and how to conquer those challenges
• Training VAs on high-level tasks like Amazon PPC
• Managing graphics and photography with remote designers

I always joke that anyone who wants to build a remote team absolutely needs a Mia. She was our first hire and everything single hire was made possible because of her. She is sort of the rock in our team and finding her was a crucial part of our strategy. You can't have a Mia on Day 1 though. What you can do is get the best general VA you can find, build rapport and trust, and gradually train them. Invest a lot on training them -- it will pay off many times over.

If you don't have a VA helping you run your  business, I highly suggest you get one now. VAs significantly reduce the amount of time you spend on trivial tasks and save you the mental and physical energy you need to focus on business growth strategies and decision-making.

If you're unsure which tasks you can assign to a VA, we made a list of 25 things we outsource to our VAs and 7 things we do ourselves. Get it here for FREE!

Resources mentioned:

AsiaInspection
Stamped.io
Tactical.com
ColorIt.com
Onlinejobs.ph
Digital Marketer Training

Thanks for tuning in this Monday and expect a fresh new episode on Thursday. Please leave us an honest review on iTunes and send comments/questions/suggestions our way at support@ecomcrew.com. Happy selling!

Mike interviews Ajoy Krishnamoorthy, the CEO of Cin7, about the importance of software in e-commerce businesses, the challenges of managing inventory across multiple channels, and the benefits of using AI to forecast inventory for your business.

Today's episode is sponsored by Clearco, a company that provides ecommerce businesses with working capital to fund inventory, marketing, shipping and logistics, and more! Check them out today! 

Branching out into another marketplace can make things more complicated than you think, inventory and accounting wise. 

Having an inventory management software can make things easier, but how? 

Ajoy Krishnamoorthy, the CEO of Cin7, an inventory management software, is on the podcast today to explain and talk about how an inventory management system can help simplify selling in multiple ecommerce platforms.

The Big Takeaway

• Managing inventory across multiple channels can be challenging and requires a centralised system.
• AI and machine learning can improve forecasting accuracy and help make informed inventory decisions.
• Data-driven insights are essential for optimizing inventory and improving business performance.

Timestamps

• 00:00 - Introduction & Sponsorship
• 01:29 - Introduction to Ajoy Krishnamurthy and Cin7
• 04:46 - Challenges of Managing Inventory Across Multiple Channels
• 10:39 - The Importance of Accurate Forecasting in Inventory Management
• 20:48 - Streamlining Financial Processes with Accounting Integration
• 25:24 - AI as an Enabler for Business Growth

Resources

• Brain Dead brand case study
• Ajoy's LinkedIn
• Get 50% off Core Plan for Cin7 for 3 months!

As always, if you have any questions or anything that you need help with, reach out to us at support@ecomcrew.com if you're interested. 

Don’t forget to leave us a review on iTunes if you enjoy our content. If you have any questions, send us an email at support@ecomcrew.com. We'd love to help you in any way we can. 

Thanks for listening!

Until next time, happy selling!

"Never lose sight of the bigger picture--life is short, so make great products that customers truly enjoy and enjoy coming to work." - Mike on one of his most important 2018 goals

2018 just rolled in and there's no better time to set goals for the fresh year than today. I think everyone should be doing something like this, as having clear and sharp goals keeps you from getting distracted by seemingly important but meaningless things. It helps you focus your time and resources on the things that truly matter.

I put together 18 goals (yes, I did 18 to be cheesy) that I'm going to work towards achieving this year. It's a collection of goals for Terran (our holding company for ColorIt, IceWraps, Tactical, and WildBaby), for EcomCrew, and for my personal life as well.

Below are my 2018 goals (in no particular order) which I will explain in detail in today's podcast:

1. Develop 50 new products
2. Launch on Amazon Canada, UK, Germany, France, Italy, and eventually, Australia
3. Optimize our Amazon listings to increase sales by 50%
4. Improve PPC
5. Implement the concepts in the book Traction in our business
6. Reach $10 million in revenue with a 10% net profit
7. Lose 12 lbs
8. Record 100 episodes of the podcast
9. Launch a new version of ecomcrew.com
10. Launch 4 new courses
11. Speak at at least 4 industry events
12. Hike 80 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail
13. Take an epic 2-week vacation
14. Visit the Philippines office at least once
15. Read 4 books (I know, I know... 4 books aren't a lot but I'm not really a book reader so please don't laugh at me)
16. Hand off my Facebook ads to other people within the company
17. Come up with at least one new tactic that no one else is doing
18. Never lose sight of the bigger picture: create 5 star products that people will truly love and continue to enjoy what I'm doing

That's a pretty long list; some of the items are harder than the others, but they're all clear goals that will guide our efforts this year. What are your goals? Feel free to share them in the comments below.

Resources mentioned:

Stamped.io
AsiaInspection
Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business
Under the Hood
ECF Live
Global Sources
Sellers Summit

Today Mike and Grant are going to give some guidelines on when to invest in your growing business. In any business there are aspects that are necessary to invest in and things that can be added as the business grows. This episode offers sound advice on when to recognize that need to grow and when your business has reached a peak.

Other bits of advice are:

• Keep your costs as low as possible or your “burn rate.”

• Know what items you need to spend money on how they will save you time.

• Check out the work  of Chris Ducker and the concept of “Superhero Syndrome.”

Mike and Grant want to give you a realistic portrait of how a business grows and why investing in that business will fuel growth. Their advice is meant for longevity and will give up and coming business owners great food for thought.

Leave us a review iTunes and head over to our site www.ecomcrew.com for more news and updates on what’s working for e-commerce today.

During our last visit to Montreal to film new course videos, we came upon a new gathering for Amazon sellers called the Orange Hat Summit. Unfortunately we weren't able to actually join the summit due to time constraints but we did meet a Chinese seller who was a speaker at the summit. Ours was one of the most brutal conversations I had, and it spawned an article written by Dave, and this podcast episode.

Although we were already familiar of the nefarious acts done by some sellers on Amazon, our conversation gave light to just how heinous some of these strategies are.

We should point out though that these tactics are not exclusive to Chinese sellers, but it is with little doubt that China is often at the forefront of formulating these strategies.

The following strategies are the most commonly used by Chinese sellers:

Opening multiple seller accounts

Some sellers have upwards of 20 accounts, some even under the name of their employees. This pads the risk of Amazon suspension--as one account gets closed, they just set up shop using another one.

Rampant review manipulation

Chinese sellers know that reviews = sales. Some sellers do something as innocent as rewarding buyers for 5-star reviews, while others buy reviews from review farms outright. Worse, however, is how they buy fake negative reviews against their competitors' products.

Stolen buyer and seller data

This one is the biggie. We've heard of Chinese sellers using stolen buyer addresses in America to send them products as part of a fake review campaign, but we had no idea just how huge this strategy has become. Apparently, you can pay some rogue Chinese Amazon employee (or someone who has access to a rogue employee) and request reports on any buyer AND seller. If a seller can find out certain information about a competitor’s product, such as their sales and page view history, it can be extremely valuable.

All these strategies has made the playing field extremely unfair, especially when Amazon doesn't seem to care at all. Add to this the fact that Chinese sellers don't have the pressure of sales taxes, don't have to conform to high safety and quality standards, and are pretty much immune from lawsuits, and the entire Amazon atmosphere looks pretty depressing for the average American seller.

With everything that's happening, it's tempting for any seller to try to dip their toes into the realm of black-hat strategies. But we know that a business built on sketchiness will not last long, and if and when Amazon finally drops the hammer, those who play by the rules will be left standing.

If you want an in-depth detail of these strategies and how Chinese sellers pull it off, make sure to read this blog post written by Dave.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode. Until the next one, happy selling.

Today, Dave and I talk about the tricks and tips we have found running our businesses that have helped our bottom lines. There are a total of ten tips and we share some personal insight with each tip. If you are running your own ecommerce business, then today’s episode could be a helpful resource for you.

Here’s what we covered during this episode:

• Why you need to keep your accounting books current.
• How to trim your product catalog to save money.
• How to cut back your advertising budget effectively.
• Why you should consolidate shipments.
• How to find the right manufacturers to save money.
• The evils of air shipping.
• How to trim back your SaaS tool budget.
• The items or prices you should always negotiate.
• Why Canada is a good source of cheaper labor right now.
• How to choose a high margin product.

Some of these topics are covered in our online course called, Build A $1,000,000 Private Label Business Importing Kickass Products From China. Check the link out below if you are interested in taking part in it. If you are planning to get into the importing business, we tried to build a course that will get you started on the right foot!

We hope this list was useful to you and we plan to be getting back to the live episodes soon. If you want to be part of our live episodes just look for our Facebook page. That’s www.facebook.com/ecomcrew and like our page. You will get notices about when we’re about to go live.

We also have two sponsors for this episode. Stamped.io, which is a great tool if you need to get some quality reviews for your Shopify store. As well as, AsiaInspection, both Dave and I use AsiaInspection when we have to inspect a shipment from China. Both of these sponsors are great partners and we’re happy to have a relationship with them.

Resources Mentioned Today:

AsiaInspection

EcomCrew Course

EcomCrew Facebook Page

Stamped.io

If you have any questions or anything you’d like us to discuss on the podcast you can now email us directly at ecomcrew.com!  Just send those emails to support@ecomcrew.com. Also, we would really appreciate if you would leave us a review on iTunes. Thanks for listening!

Mike sits down with the co-founder of Intelligems, Drew Marconi, to discuss a subject many entrepreneurs find quite personal: pricing.

Pricing is a tricky aspect to navigate when running a business. Set it too high, you’ll turn away potential customers. Set it too low and you’ll run the risk of struggling to keep your business afloat. So, how do you balance the scales in a mutually beneficial way?

This week on the show, Drew Marconi of Intelligems talks to us about the company he co-founded, the impact of price on conversion, the importance of price testing, and the best ways to go about it.

Audio Timestamps:  

• Intro - 0:00 
• Invitation to Prosper Event - 1:41
• How Drew’s interest in pricing started - 4:22 
• Background of Intelligems - 7:16
• The importance of experimentation in pricing - 9:07
• Best methods for price testing - 11:13
• What Mike is doing wrong regarding repricing - 17:10
• Being afraid of touching pricing - 20:38
• Intelligems’ services - 27:05
• Pricing trends according to Drew - 31:25

Thank you so much Drew for coming on the podcast. If you have any questions for him about pricing or Intelligems’ services, shoot him an email at drew@intelligems.io and maybe work together on how you can find more profit in your brand’s store.

If you’re looking to build an Amazon brand from scratch, we’ve got a new edition of Secret Sauce, where we’ll be sharing with you our monthly numbers from all our brands and deriving relevant insights that you can use to start yours.

By subscribing, you’ll get access to exclusive monthly mini-classes, previous webinars, as well as email support directly from Dave and I. For our next webinar on the 16th, we’ll be discussing how to make improvements on your products for competitive advantage.

That’s it for this week’s EcomCrew Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to leave us a review over on iTunes. Happy selling and we’ll see you in the next one!

During last week's episode Matt and I talked about the lowest hanging fruit he can take advantage of as he transitions from a mixed B2B and B2C model to completely B2C.

Matt owns Angle 33, selling wine thermals, beer chillers, and other cool housewares made of concrete. The nature of Matt's products make it quite difficult to optimize areas like PPC ads, but its uniqueness definitely makes it stand out from the hordes of Amazon products in the same category.

In this episode we continue to talk about the low-hanging fruit he can easily pluck in his transition. We talk about how he can use the uniqueness of his products to his advantage and get around the advertising problem.

Specifically, we talk about the following:

• Amazon customization and work-reward ratio
• Email campaigns and getting people into a subscribers list
• Facebook and Instagram ads
• Ways to leverage B2B sales to create more B2C sales
• Social proof
• Discounts and reviews
• Product price point
• Google shopping
• Product photography
• Launching on Amazon with a bang
• Product variations

We'd like to thank Matt again for coming on to the podcast and talking about his business. Don't forget to check out his cool concrete wine thermals and beer chillers at Angle 33.

If you want to be featured on your own Under the Hood episode, just sign up here.

Resources mentioned:

Angle 33
MyEcomCrew
E102: Amazon Product Launch Strategy for 2018
How I Develop and Launch Dozens of New Products a Year
Under the Hood

Thanks for listening! Until next week, happy selling!

Cory Stout is perhaps the most frequent guest of the EcomCrew podcast. He did a Roadshow with us as well as a two-part Under the Hood segment.

In this episode, I talk to him again to see how his business is doing and how my advice to him almost three years ago worked out. We also talk about the future of ecommerce, his plans for the next year, and other random stuff about being an entrepreneur in this day and age.

Timestamps:

• How being consistent helped in growing my sites - 3:42
• How Cory implemented my email marketing advice in his business - 7:35
• Living in a world of infinite leverage - 9:40
• Assessing Cory’s plan to make an eCEO - 12:20
• What decisions are worth making and which ones should be delegated - 16:48
• The effects of raising your products’ prices - 24:44
• Living in the present vs. living online - 29:20
• The philosophy that best defines me - 32:36
• The future of ecommerce - 36:15
• Will Amazon still be the ecommerce leader in 3 to 5 years? - 40:22
• Cory’s plans for 2021 - 45:58

If you want to know more about Cory’s business, you can check out his awesome sunglasses over at woodies.com.

If you want to be a guest at the podcast, you can sign up now to get an hour of free coaching. This is also an opportunity for you to create more awareness about your brand while we get awesome content for the podcast. It’s a win-win!

And if you’re getting value out of the business advice we give to guests on the show, you’ll love our upcoming webinar.

Get the chance to ask us anything on December 1 during our Q&A webinar. This is a feature that we give exclusively to EcomCrew Premium members, but we’re letting you experience it for free.

All you have to do is sign up and show up on December 1 at 10 AM (PST).

I hope you enjoyed this episode, and if you did, please leave us a review over on iTunes.

Happy selling!

As e-commerce sellers, we can become attached to our businesses, especially when we built them from the ground up. However, at some point in time, we have to let them go to move on to better projects or, as it was in my case, to let go of some of the stress that comes with running multiple businesses.

There are good reasons for selling your business, and our guest for this episode knows them all too well.

Greg Elfrink is the Director of Marketing of Empire Flippers, a company that specialises in buying and selling online businesses. In this episode, he shares seven of the most interesting businesses he had to deal with at Empire Flippers and the lessons he learned from each.

Timestamps:

• Catching up with Greg - 2:26
• Business #1 - 5:03
• How important are product niches? - 6:53
• Business #2 - 8:30
• Why I sold ColorIt and the factors I considered before doing so -10:06
• How to line up your personal and business goals - 13:00
• Is it okay to sell your e-commerce business? - 14:02
• Business #3 - 16:56
• How to be featured on review articles - 20:20
• The latest improvements on Tactical.com - 22:10
• Business #4 - 28:15
• The importance of simplifying your e-commerce business - 30:06
• Business #5 - 31:30
• How EcomCrew is designed for simplification - 35:12
• Business #6 - 37:34
• Business #7 - 39:18
• The future of e-commerce and brick-and-mortar stores - 43:00
• How to get a free valuation from Empire Flippers - 49:02
• Why you should try Empire Flippers’ services - 50:00

If you want to know how much your business is worth, you can visit empireflippers.com/valuation-tool. To contact Greg, you can reach him at greg@empireflippers.com.

If you want to get the chance to win a free annual EcomCrew Premium subscription valued at $2000, go and answer our Amazon software survey. There are just four questions, so it wouldn’t even take much of your time.

If you loved this episode, please don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes.

Happy selling!

Time truly flies. We’re just a quarter away from the holidays. That means a ‘goals update’ is long overdue. But, that’s not necessarily a bad thing as I get to cover a lot of ground and take you on the journey I’ve been on this year.

It was definitely an eventful eight months. I sold one of our best-selling brands, freed up my time, and am now able to spend time in the RV on extended road trips while doing the EcomCrew Roadshow.

There were misses here and there, but significantly more wins. If you haven’t listened to my previous updates, you can listen to them here and here. 

And now to the meat and potatoes of this episode. I’ve listed down the 19 goals along with their corresponding timestamps so it will be easier for you to follow along. 

1. Sell a brand. (3:52)
2. Position another brand for sale in late 2020. (4:38)
3. Getting back to location independence. (5:32)
4. Reducing debt to zero dollars. (8:04)
5. Hike the West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island. (9:01)
6. Take at least 10 weeks of personal travel. (10:59)
7. Record 6 or more episodes of the Roadshow. (12:53)
8. Invest in at least 1 ecommerce business. (14:16)
9. Lose 10 more pounds. (15:21)
10. Visit the Philippines office in 2019. (16:13)
11. Start selling our services for EcomCrew. (17:03)
12. Significantly improve the quality of the podcast. (17:50)
13. Film season 2 of the 5 Minute Pitch. (19:35)
14. Break each of our brands out into different companies. (20:40)
15. Start hosting personal events for EcomCrew. (22:09)
16. Speak at 6 industry events. (23:11)
17. Shift to doing things that only bring me immense personal fulfillment. (24:23)
18. Do intermittent fasting for all of 2019 and eat less meat. (24:59)
19. Not to drink the rest of 2019. (26:40)

Learn to find and develop products that stand out from all of the me-too crap everyone else is selling. Sign up for the September 12 webinar.

Try out Kickfurther today! Get $500 off of Kickfurther's services when you sign up for a business account or receive $10 when you join as an investor.

I hope you enjoyed this latest installment of the podcast. As always, feel free to leave a comment below.

If you think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes.

Till the next one. Happy selling!

In this episode, Dave discusses how to reduce inbound placement fees with Amazon, how placement fees are calculated and who the winners and losers are since these fees were implemented. 

Today's episode is sponsored by Clearco, a company that provides ecommerce businesses with working capital to fund inventory, marketing, shipping and logistics, and more! Check them out today! 

It's been a few months since Amazon implemented their new Inbound Placement Fees. 

The amount of increase varies, depending on the product, warehouse location, and other factors. But the good news is that you don’t always have to pay the fees.

In this episode, we’ll explore the 3 ways you can use to avoid or reduce your Inventory Placement Fee when sending products to Amazon.

The Big Takeaways

1. Shipping to four or more locations can help avoid placement fees.
2. Shipping to Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD) can also help avoid placement fees, although it may come with other fees such as receiving and warehousing fees.
3. Choosing a more centralized 3PL can help minimize placement fees and partner carrier fees.

Timestamps

• 00:00 - Introduction to Placement Fees
• 02:20 - Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD) as a Solution
• 10:53 - Ship into AWD to Avoid Placement Fees
• 13:48 - Consider the Location of Your 3PL
• 17:09 - Impact of Placement Fees on Profitability

As always, if you have any questions or anything that you need help with, reach out to us at support@ecomcrew.com if you're interested. 

Don’t forget to leave us a review on iTunes if you enjoy our content. If you have any questions, send us an email at support@ecomcrew.com. We'd love to help you in any way we can. 

Thanks for listening!

Until next time, happy selling!

If you’re a regular podcast listener, you’ll know that I’ve been involved with something called the 5 Minute Pitch. It’s a show where we offer up and coming ecommerce entrepreneurs the opportunity to grow their businesses. This season, we had 32 people make their pitches to us for the chance to win $50,000.

Going into the second round, we’ve whittled down the contestants to 17. You can watch the final three pitches from Round 1, as well as the deliberation episode on YouTube.

Today, I’ll be talking to someone who made the cut. Dawn LaFontaine owns and runs Cat in the Box, a company that sells stylish cardboard boxes for cats. She was featured on the very first episode of 5 Minute Pitch and got a “yes” from all 5 judges.

Dawn left quite an impression on me with her presentation. She has such an infectious personality and a good business story that I thought it would be great to share that with our listeners through an Under the Hood episode.

In this episode, she and I discuss some strategies she could use to drive and convert traffic. These include:

• Getting into interruption marketing by targeting Facebook groups that are cat owners
• Looking at the subset of those cat owners who are homeowners

Join season two of 5 Minute Pitch by filling out and submitting the application form.

If you’re interested to get onsite advice from Mike and have your business be featured, sign up for the EcomCrew Roadshow today!

Join this month’s giveaway and get the chance to win an annual Premium subscription for free.

Finally, if you enjoyed listening and think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!

Welcome to Episode 318 of the EcomCrew Podcast, and greetings from Wichita, Kansas! It feels great to finally be out of the house for awhile, especially after being cooped up in the house for a few months now. Leave a comment down below on where your first destination will be after this lockdown, we'd love to read your answers.

Today on the podcast, we're doing something we've never really done before because we've got more than 2 guests on the same episode! Today, we're joined by Michelle, Zeb and Dan, the 3 members of Team Pomona which is one of the moderated mastermind groups that we run here at EcomCrew Premium. If you're new to the podcast, Masterminds are basically moderated groups of ecommerce entrepreneurs that will help keep each other accountable to their yearly, quarterly and monthly goals for their business. 

I wanted to get them on today's podcast to talk about the various advantages of being part of a Mastermind group, because being an ecommerce entrepreneur in itself can be quite lonely. The journey feels like a tough one because it'll feel like you're the only one going through difficulties with Amazon, manufacturers or customers. That's where our Mastermind groups come in, because being part of a group of like-minded people who understand what you’re going through can really make the difference between getting burned out or enjoying life as an entrepreneur. It also means that you'll be getting access to a network of experienced sellers who can give you useful advice whenever you run into problems that you just can't solve yourself.

Personally, joining a mastermind group has probably been one the best decisions I’ve made for my business, and I really hope that you'll see how advantageous it is to be part of one. Below you'll find a list of reasons (with timestamps!) that we talk about in today's episode: 

• Mike's personal experiences with Mastermind groups – 4:38 
• How each guest joined Ecomcrew Premium, made their way into the Mastermind and how it helped their business – 5:27
• The rarity of accountability in ecommerce and why calling on someone's BS is important – 12:12
• How diversity in ecommerce businesses can help you grow your own business – 20:01
• The most valuable thing to come out of the Mastermind for each guest – 24:05
• The format of each Mastermind, and what they consist of – 31:28

Today's the first day of Premium! Subscribe to EcomCrew Premium for one-on-one support with your business, access to a private Facebook group, two webinars every month where you get to ask us questions and learn from experts, and also discussing strategies on how to improve your ecommerce business.

Finally, if you enjoyed listening and think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!

Happy Selling! 

Today Grant’s going to step out of the podcast. I'm Mike Jackness and I’m going to talk about my experience with running a contest for my site colorit.com.

On December 5, 2015 we launched colorit.com. We had tried our product out on Amazon and decided to make the move to our own site to build the brand.

Our first contest was January 1st. We offered a set of colored pencils every day for 30 days. At first I wasn't sure if this approach was going to work, but I have to say I have been very surprised and pleased with the results.

During today’s podcast I’ll share these key points with you.

• The number of entries, sales, and overall social media hits this contest has gotten us.
• The email campaign we developed to keep our brand in the forefront of people's minds.
• The discount deal we offer non-winning contestants.
• How we’re providing value to our customers.
• How desktop vs. mobile interaction during this contest.

Resources Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Glen.io

Klaviyo

Facebook

If you have any questions or anything you’d like us to discuss on the podcast please go to ecomcrew.com and fill out the contact form. Also we would really appreciate if you would leave us a review on iTunes. Thanks  for listening!

This week's episode is a special one, as it's one of the few episodes where I get to have Dave on the show. Better yet, we are sitting in the same room in Hong Kong, just a couple of days after the Global Sources Summit where we both had a blast. Hopefully videos of the talks will be released soon for those who were not able to attend the event.

We have many takeaways from our time in Hong Kong but one of the most eye-opening is just how much Chinese sellers are invading the Amazon market. They've grown comfortable using Amazon FBA and have become sophisticated in their marketing techniques. Adding to this is the fact that more and more of these sellers are using downright black-hat techniques to try to win more sales.

This topic is just one of the 5 key takeaways Dave and I will talk about in this episode.

Here are other conversation points:

• What Chinese sellers are doing to get market share and what you can do to protect your sales
• Amazon's cross-border program and how American sellers can benefit from it
• Black-hat tactics employed by many Chinese sellers
• PPC optimization
• Increasing pollution crackdowns by the Chinese government and how it can affect you
• Increasing Chinese labor costs

With Chinese sellers getting on the Amazon train and recent factory crackdowns, we might be facing a challenging time ahead. You might be tempted to attempt black-hat techniques like other sellers are doing to stay on top, but keep in mind that the dire consequences make it hardly worth doing. We highly encourage you to stay on Amazon's good side.

Resources mentioned:

Global Sources
ams.amazon.com
Stamped.io
AsiaInspection

We hope you enjoy Episode 93 of the EcomCrew Podcast. If you want to reach us, just email us at support@ecomcrew.com. Thanks for listening!

As the end of the year approaches, and the crazy holiday rush starts to build up, Dave and I wanted to take the opportunity to address the questions that come up quite often from our Premium members, and share it with everyone on the podcast.

So on today's podcast, we talk about a variety of topics, from things like how I built an amazing team in the Philippines, to the best way to improve your Amazon listings. Below is the list of questions and topics that we go through today: 

1. How to Improve Your Amazon Listings (6:52)
   
2. Answering the Age Old Question: "Why are My Sales Tanking?" (9:35) 
   
   
3. Reviving Sales for a Dead Product (11:18)
   
   
4. Our Opinion on Variations and How to Handle Them on Amazon (17:08)
   
   
5. What to Do When Your Amazon Account Gets Suspended (23:43) 
   
   
6. The Benefits of Sourcing Agents (27:40)
   
   
7. Hiring in the Philippines (31:09)

Ecomcrew Premium is open for the last time this year. As a Premium member, you get access to online webinars, our full-length courses, and participate in in-person events! Get valuable information from other 7-figure sellers or if you have questions, you’ll have the opportunity to get answers personally from Dave and I. 

Register now here and use the code "CYBER" for a 50% discount today. 

Want to get more value out of Premium? Find out how it can help you add more products to your catalog or leverage Facebook for marketing. Send us an email at support@ecomcrew.com. 

This December, I'll be part of an amazing event called Smart Traffic Live which is an event put together by the enthusiastic Ezra Firestone and the Smart Marketer Team. Join me and other big names in the industry like Mikael Yang, the CEO of ManyChat, Mary Kathryn Johnson, the founder of Messenger Funnels, and more. Sign up now, and use the code "MIKEJACKNESS" for $100 off on your early bird tickets! 

Related Posts

E101: Tips on Finding Profitable Products in a Saturated Amazon Market
Know about the benefits and disadvantages of products with high volume sales vs. products not on Amazon yet. 

The Ultimate Guide to Amazon Variations
Learn about how Variations work on Amazon. 

How to Find and Train the Best Filipino Virtual Assistants in 2019
As your business continues to grow, there just isn't enough time in the world for you to continuously focus on menial tasks while focusing on the big picture. In this article, we go over outsourcing and how we find the best VAs that helps us with our business daily. 

Over the past few weeks we've been posting updates on Chinese sellers manipulating Amazon. While black-hat practices are particularly pronounced in China, not all Chinese sellers rely on these methods to be successful on Amazon.

In this episode we are joined by Zack Franklin of AMZKungfu. Zack currently lives in Shenzhen, China, and he is a popular consultant for Chinese Amazon sellers. He has worked with a number of big Chinese companies helping them with marketing, software, and training. These companies rack up $150+ million in revenue individually, with one even getting acquired for more than $1 billion.

The majority of sellers Zack works with do not rely on shady business practices. While many of us attribute the success of Chinese sellers to black-hat practices, Zack argues that successful Chinese sellers are doing a couple of things we are not... and these are not TOS violations.

Chinese work culture

One glaring difference between the Chinese and westerners is their work culture. The Chinese practice the so-called 9-9-6, which means that people work from 9AM to 9PM, 6 days a week. It's not uncommon for Chinese sellers to keep working into the night without a day off, until they see their products on page 1 of Amazon search results.

The Chinese also work very fast. Most of the companies Zack works with have their own photography studio so they could get images for listings blazingly fast.

Smart and efficient marketing

If there's one thing we'd like you to take away from the episode, it's this: you can get 400 clicks to your Amazon listing for only $30 with Google Ads. Zack's clients were able to leverage a very simple technique to get PPC costs down and he talks about how to do it in detail in this episode.

He also talks about YouTube pre-roll ads, best ad practices, and the virtues of not giving discounts to customers too early.

Another tool in Zack's arsenal is Facebook Messenger. His clients find it to be a great way to get reviews and continue interacting with customers. If you want to know how we grew our Facebook subscribers to 50,000 people in less than a year, join our free Facebook Messenger webinar on September 25th.

Connecting with fellow Amazon sellers

Zack emphasizes the importance of meeting up with fellow Amazon sellers in order to learn from them. Chinese sellers are very aware of this and use it to their advantage.

If you want to reach out to Zack, you can do so by going to his website at amzkungfu.com, or emailing him at zack.f.pro@gmail.com

Resources mentioned:

EcomCrew Facebook Messenger Webinar
AMZKungfu

Thanks for listening to this episode! Until the next one, happy selling.

We're starting a new series on the EcomCrew Podcast today. This series is called Traction, inspired by a book I read recently which had a tremendous impact on me and my business, so much so that I'm applying the principles laid out in the book to my own company. I'm documenting the process in this podcast series so that you and your business could benefit from my experience.

I've mostly been an entrepreneur for as far as I can remember. When I was 18, armed with a box of business cards and a pager, I started my own company called Discount Computer Consultants. One of my clients hired me and I got a taste of the corporate life. After that stint I went back to being an entrepreneur and have run various companies since. Through all those years, I noticed that there's one thing that kept repeating in all the companies I've run or been in: as the company got bigger, things just started falling apart.

As I run my current company, I've tried my best to avoid the same thing happening especially as we keep on doubling every year. Experience has greatly helped me on this front, but something kept nagging at me and I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

Until I read Traction.

Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business is a business book written by Gino Wickman who developed a practical method for businesses called the Entrepreneurial Operating System, which aims to help entrepreneurs keep their company on track to achieve lofty goals. We certainly have lofty goals for Terran and Traction is already helping us get there.

This episode is the first of many dedicated to Traction. Here are some of the things I discuss:

• How I started in eCommerce
• The problems most companies face as they grow
• Introduction to Traction and the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS)
• The importance of sitting down and writing your company's core values
• Our company's 7 core values and how we came up with them

We've slowly began rolling out the Entrepreneurial Operating System in our business and we're already seeing big improvements. I'll continue to cover our progress in this series of podcast episodes, and if you have any questions, just comment down below.

And speaking of comments, once you do leave a comment on this episode, or on the previous episode, you get a chance to win a limited edition EcomCrew mug! Just leave a comment by the end of the week and we'll ship you your cool mug anywhere in the world if you win. Check out how fabulous this mug is here.

We're also running another webinar on May 16th where Dave and I will be talking about our Amazon launch strategy. We've talked about our strategy many times both in the podcast and blog, but this is the first time that you can ask us as many questions as you like, as we provide ample time for Q&A.

Resources mentioned:

EcomCrew Webinar
Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business (Amazon afiliate link)
E120: Getting Fired From My Own Company
Basecamp
Who Moved My Cheese?

Thanks as always for supporting the EcomCrew Podcast. Don't forget to post your comments down below to win your EcomCrew mug! Until next week, happy selling.

According to Jungle Scout’s new report, Amazon seems to be making very good money on advertising. Mike unpacks the report with Jungle Scout's Jake Corkin.

Personally, I’ve been using Jungle Scout for several years and I’ve found it to be a great tool for any ecommerce business.

We’re also grateful to have worked with them as affiliates for a while now. We’ve even had their CEO on the podcast.

For this episode, we have their Director of Product, Jake Corkin. Aside from his full-time position at Jungle Scout, he also sells on Amazon as a side business.

Just recently, Jungle Scout released an Amazon Advertising Report for 2022 and I thought it would be great to dive into this with Jake.

Here are the highlights from this episode.

Timestamps: 

• Intro - 0:00
• A brief background on Jake - 1:00
• Jungle Scout’s new capabilities - 2:30
• Dissecting the Amazon Advertising Report - 8:00
• The difficulty of launching a new product these days - 12:17
• Consumers’ preferred ad type - 13:44
• ROAS changes - 17:05
• The value for sellers in this report - 18:43
• Most and least competitive categories - 20:14
• Predictions and strategies - 22:16
• The equalization of ad spending - 24:22
• Where you can view the report - 29:26

You can read Jungle Scout’s Amazon Advertising Report in full detail over on their website. Jake, thank you for coming on the podcast and sharing your insights with us.

If you want to give Jungle Scout a try, you can sign up through our affiliate link and get a sweet deal on a subscription of your choice.

You know the drill, don’t forget to leave us a review over on iTunes. Happy selling and we’ll see you in the next one!

Mike and Dave talk about the crazy sale that Mike's been working on for the past few months, the details of each sale, and what's next for him. 

Back in July, I announced on the podcast recently where my headspace has been at and the events that lead to the possible reasons why. 

The future however, had other plans. Things have progressed faster than I've come to expect, and that's what Dave and I discuss on today's episode. 

Dave and I recount what's been happening in the past few weeks, which include multiple business sales, the value of content websites with AI looming over the horizon, and the ever delicate balance of expanding vs. streamlining my portfolio. 

Audio Timestamps: 

• 00:00 - Introduction 
• 02:03 - Mike’s Garage Sale Madness 
• 03:34 - The Unexpected Sale of Another Business
• 05:23 - Expanding vs. Streamlining 
• 14:09 - The Future of Content Sites with AI 
• 19:15 - Letting Go of the Third Business  
• 29:05 - Retirement and Future Plans 
• 32:55 - Reinventing Himself
• 37:30 - The Importance of Not Moving Goalposts

So stay tuned, as we continue to update on my plans for the future and what I've been doing in the weeds of ecommerce!

I hope you took away some valuable insights from this episode. Don’t forget to leave us a review on iTunes if you enjoy our content. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to support@ecomcrew.com.

Happy selling and I’ll see you on the next one!

Dave and I discuss the reasons why e-commerce valuations have significantly decreased this year, Mike's run at the World Series of Poker event, and the potential valuation of content websites. 

Today's episode is sponsored by Clearco, a company that provides ecommerce businesses with working capital to fund inventory, marketing, shipping and logistics, and more! Check them out today! 

It's been almost a year since I last sold off one of my e-commerce businesses. 

Since then, a lot has changed.

Amazon's new fees were implemented, interest rates have skyrocketed, and FBA Aggregators are few and far between. 

I invited Dave over today to discuss how Amazon may or may not have had a hand in directly affecting the valuations of e-commerce businesses, and why the market hasn't recovered from 2 years ago. Here are some of the big takeaways from this episode: 

The Big Takeaways

• E-commerce valuations have decreased mainly due to the uncertainty caused by Amazon's fees and policies. Who knows when Amazon will come out with more fees that'll impact profitability? 
• Google's latest algorithm update has hit a LOT of content websites, leading to decreased traffic for everyone involved which directly impact its valuations. 
• If your e-commerce business is sold at a 2x multiple, it might not be enough for you to retire. Wouldn't it be better to hold onto your business instead? 

Timestamps

• 00:00 - Introduction and Sponsor
• 02:56 - Mike's Run at the World Series of Poker
• 08:13 - E-commerce Valuations
• 20:07 - Valuations for FBA Businesses
• 21:06 - Valuations for Off-Amazon Brands
• 22:01 - Uncertainty in Content Site Valuations
• 28:14 - Decision to Hold onto a Profitable Business
• 31:08 - Dave's Funny Story 
• 34:21 - eBay's Attempt to Change

As always, if you have any questions or anything that you need help with, reach out to us at support@ecomcrew.com if you're interested. 

Don’t forget to leave us a review on iTunes if you enjoy our content. If you have any questions, send us an email at support@ecomcrew.com. We'd love to help you in any way we can. 

Thanks for listening!

Until next time, happy selling!

Welcome to our last podcast of 2015! We love all the feedback we’ve received since we launched our podcast, and we can’t wait to hear what you guys have to say next year. That’s why on today’s episode we’re answering a listener’s questions!

On our forum, David recently asked how we managed the logistics of owning and maintaining multiple brands under one business. Many of you out there may have quite a few small businesses under your belt, and managing the paperwork, the inventory, and the accounting of each of these different gigs can be really frustrating, especially when it comes down to multiple platforms, different social media accounts, and advertising for each and every one of your new products.

Grant has even done very thorough research trying to find the best software to help us manage all of our different brands. He discusses this research on today’s podcast, and we cover a few points we’ve had hands-on experience with, including:

• Balancing the multiple brands within your business
• How to merge and manage inventories for multiple brands
• Common inventory errors and how you can avoid them
• Using tech and software to help you handle the logistics of your business
• Grant’s personal research on different management software
• The pros and cons of using various software and how we use them for shipping, accounting, and inventory management
• How we – two guys who really hate accounting – find the best ways to manage our accounts and taxes
• Telecommunication tips to keep you visible and accessible for your customers

Resources Mentioned:

StitchLabs

ShipStation

Sellbrite

TradeGecko

Orderhive

HubLogix

Skubana

Xero

Quicken

Phone.com

eVoice.com

Mike’s 2015 Year in Review Blog Post

If you have any questions or anything you’d like us to discuss on the podcast please go to ecomcrew.com and fill out the contact form. Also we would really appreciate if you would leave us a review on iTunes.

We've released 4 Under the Hood episodes so far and we've been getting a lot of good comments about the segment. It seems to resonate with a large listener base, and since we've been really happy about your feedback, we're bumping things up and releasing more of these episodes.

For today's episode, we have Cory Stout of Woodies.com on the spotlight. Cory is living a nomadic lifestyle while running Woodies, and since automation is a big part of his business, he has been racking up a long list of SAAS (Software as a Service) subscriptions. Today he and I talk about his subscriptions and evaluate whether or not they're worth keeping.

Some conversation points:

• How Cory got into ecommerce
• Why he sold his first business to his AirBnb host
• The background of Woodies
• Why he chose to sell wooden items for his second business
• His mom's role in his business and the "2017 Employee of the Year" award he gave her
• His SAAS subscriptions list (spoiler alert: it's a long one)
• My evaluation of his SAAS subscriptions

In Part 2 of our conversation, Cory and I continue to evaluate and talk about his SAAS subscriptions. Stay tuned for Part 2 on Thursday!

Resources mentioned:

MyEcomCrew
Under the Hood

As always, thanks for listening to this episode. Until the next one, happy selling!

In this podcast, I’m joined by Mads Singers, a business coach who owns a management consulting firm specializing in ecommerce entrepreneurs. He also owns a VA company in Davao, Philippines.

When you’re a seven-figure Amazon seller, it’s tough staying on top of every little business detail. And if you’re anything like me, you experience separation anxiety whenever you need to hand over work to someone else to do. But as Mads explains, delegation is a necessary evil. As a business owner, you need to free your time so you can focus on big-ticket items.

Here are some highlights from our discussion.

Taking genuine ownership of tasks

It’s always better to give employees genuine ownership of their tasks rather than an SOP they have to follow every time they do a task. Genuine ownership means giving your employees your vote of confidence and empowering them to take a process you have and improve on it.

“Deer in the headlights”

Mads employs the DISC behavior framework with his clients to help them understand themselves as well as the people they work with. Understanding your employees’ individual traits and characteristics will allow you to assign them the right type of task.

“Now, because someone sells themselves really well, doesn’t mean they’re going to be great for that job. And being able to see through that personality and understand is this person really good at could be immensely important.”, explains Mads.

What tasks should you delegate?

1. Things you hate doing
2. Things you’re not good at
3. Things that take up a lot of time for you to do
4. Low-priority tasks

Other Useful Resources:

MyEcomcrew

Mads Singers Management Consulting

Thanks for listening to this episode! If you enjoyed listening and think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!

Hi Listeners! I’m back from the Sellers Summit in Florida and am so excited to share my experiences with you. The summit was not only a really fun experience, but it was also educational. So, for this episode, I will be recapping my time at the summit and sharing any useful information.

Before we begin, I must say that I loved meeting some of you podcast listeners at the summit and it’s really something to know that you’ve entertained and helped other people.

Though my trip to Florida was a bit of whirlwind, here are some things that were discussed there and that I will cover on today’s episode: 

• The importance of Masterminds
• Takeaways from the keynote speech at the Sellers Summit
• Greg Mercer’s speech: Never try to develop a product that people don’t want
• Knowing your audience and finding your niche
• Aspects of automation in business 

Thanks again for listening. I’m looking forward to the next episode, which I know will be very exciting and one that you will all really enjoy.

Resources Mentioned:

Sellers Summit

eCommerceFuel

JungleScout

ECom Crew Facebook Page

If you have any questions or anything you’d like us to discuss on the podcast please go to ecomcrew.com and fill out the contact form. Also, we would really appreciate if you would leave us a review on iTunes. Thanks for listening!

EcomCrew has gone through a big transformation ever since the site merged with Dave Bryant's site ChineseImporting.com. In less than a year we've accomplished so much--we've launched new courses, upped the podcast to two episodes per week, and revamped the entire EcomCrew site. Dave and I are tremendously happy with what EcomCrew has become and we are gearing to do even more, but we would not have gone to this point if not for the people helping us behind the scenes.

If you've been listening to the podcast recently or reached out to us at some point, you might have heard of or encountered Abby. Abby is our Filipino VA and one of the people working behind me and Dave to help us get EcomCrew to become so much more. While Dave and I focus (and get distracted) on the course content and speaking at industry events, Abby makes sure everything else run smoothly--from scheduling the podcast episodes to answering emails.

We recently got a chance to get Abby on the podcast (after much persuasion) during our trip to the Philippines. We wanted everybody to meet Abby and get to know her a little, at least virtually. Here's what she and I discussed in this episode:

• How we found her and how she became the EcomCrew VA
• The challenges she encountered early on in the job
• Her day-to-day tasks
• How she learned to produce the podcast
• What's coming for EcomCrew in the future
• Her pro-tip on how to get your VA to stick around

We'd like to thank Abby again for getting on the podcast despite the fact that she was too shy to do it :) If you have someone, or a team of people behind your, never forget to appreciate them and recognize what they're doing to help you get to where you want to be.

Resources mentioned:

Amazon Launch Strategy webinar
E96: Our Philippines Team

Thanks so much for listening! Until the next episode, happy selling.

If you’re new to importing products from China, wiring money to a supplier you’ve never met face-to-face can be a scary prospect. Well, you can rest easy because the likelihood of you being scammed out of hundreds or thousands of dollars is low.

But, resting easy doesn’t mean you can be totally lax or just partially involved. Scams might be rare in China but they do exist and in today’s episode, we’re going to talk about some of them.

To get you warmed up for the actual podcast, here are the highlights.

• Two of the most well-known scams in China is a phishing scheme where you end up wiring money to a different entity altogether and receiving a low-quality version of the product you ordered.
• Safeguard yourself and your business by getting to know your supplier. If it’s not possible to meet them in person, set up a video chat. By establishing a relationship with your supplier, you’re also building trust. Over time, you will eventually be more comfortable in doing business and reach a point where you can fully rely on each other.
• If you receive an email from your supplier informing you that their bank information has changed, don’t wire the money out immediately. Call the supplier to confirm that the email is legit.
• Communicate your expectations from the get-go. Tell the supplier that you intend to have an inspection for each shipment or order. Let them know what your tolerances are for manufacturing mistakes (e.g. 100 minor, 50 major, 2 defective). Make sure they understand that if they don’t meet these criteria, they won’t get paid in full.  
• Another way to avoid receiving defective products is to provide your supplier with an actual sample. That way, they’ll know what materials a product should be made of and what it should actually look like.
• Don’t leave any room for interpretation. The provisions of the contract with your supplier should be clear and both parties should have a good understanding of the conditions within it. It’s also good to have a paper trail of your communications with your supplier so you have something to go back to should problems arise.

Don’t be afraid to assert yourself when the situation calls for it. Being clear about your product and shipping expectations will save you a lot of grief in the end. For a detailed guide of avoiding scams, check out Dave’s blog post that’s linked in the Resources section below.

Other Useful Resources:

Free Course Videos

The Ultimate Guide to Avoid Being Scammed On Alibaba And When Importing

Asian Inspection

Thanks for listening to this episode! If you enjoyed listening and think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!

WallCharmers co-owner Viktor Morosov talks about how his company has grown and evolved since quitting his office job, and the struggles he encountered during the pandemic.

Juggling a nine-to-five job and an e-commerce start-up is no easy feat and is certainly an exhausting set-up to maintain. 

So when Wall Charmers’ numbers hit an all-time high in April 2021, Viktor and his business partner Lance took a leap of faith, resigned from their main jobs and decided to run their e-commerce baby full time.

Growing their company during the Covid crisis–what with all the delays and restrictions–proved to be a challenge. But Viktor took everything in stride, gaining invaluable lessons and experiences along the way.

Timestamps: 

• Mike and Viktor’s first meeting during the EcomCrew roadshow in 2019 - 0:33
• How Wall Charmers has evolved since then - 2:57
• Maintaining a warehouse versus tapping 3PL - 6:00
• Decision fatigue and the importance of the ‘less is more’ approach - 8:45
• Challenges in logistics and inventory during Covid era - 11:45
• Viktor quitting his job to focus on Wall Charmers - 17:05
• Taking the time to pause and be grateful for the big and small wins - 26:00
• Running an e-commerce business while traveling around the world - 30:00
• Valuable lessons Viktor learned over the years - 42:55

And just like that, we’ve come to the end of episode 431 of the podcast. Viktor, thank you so much for always accepting our invitation to be on the show. It’s always a fun conversation with you.

As always, feel free to leave us a review over on iTunes if you had fun tuning in to this week’s episode. Happy selling and we’ll see you in the next one!

Today's podcast is a special edition of the podcast because we have an accompanying video that comes along with today's episode. So if you'd like to join in and watch me interview my good friend Greg, hop on! If you're on the road or would rather listen to this episode, we'll have the normal audio-only version like usual just for you guys.

During the filming of the Five Minute Pitch, I got the chance to really get to know some of the other judges that I shared the table with and one of those judges was Greg Mercer. If you've been listening to the podcast since day one, you'll know that I've visited him a number of times over the year, and this time, I got the chance to finally do a 1-on-1 podcast with him where we dive deep into the creation of JungleScout, what were the circumstances that lead him to grow JungleScout to the amazing tool that it is today, and the amazing team that's he's managed to put together over the years. 

If this is the first time you've ever heard of Greg Mercer and JungleScout, this will be a great opportunity to get to know him and the amazing tool that helps thousands of Amazon sellers around the world find their product. Here's a list of questions that I asked Greg during the interview, for your benefit: 

1. What came first, selling on Amazon or the JungleScout plugin? (7:11) 
2. When did you first start selling on Amazon? (8:13)
3. How did you find out about selling on Amazon? (8:38)
4. What were your initial products? (10:03)
5. Where did you get the capital to start selling on Amazon? (11:46)
6. What was the plan after seeing the benefits on selling on Amazon?  (14:26)
7. How did JungleScout come to be after that? (17:07)
8. At what point did you start selling JungleScout? (18:46)
9. How did JungleScout evolve from there? (20:47)
10. How much were you doing on Amazon when you decided to sell JungleScout? (23:45)
11. When did you realise that you had to focus more on JungleScout rather than Amazon? (24:25)
12. How did you manage to put together such a great team? (31:08)
13. What are some of the books that have personally helped you learn more about your business? (33:05) 
14. What's the 8 new features that JungleScout released over the past few weeks? (34:17)
15. What's next for JungleScout? (39:13) 

If you're interested to get the JungleScout plugin, you can visit us here to learn more. 

This is the last chance for you to join Ecomcrew Premium for 2019. As a Premium member, you get access to online webinars, our full-length courses, and participate in in-person events! Get valuable information from other 7-figure sellers or if you have questions, you’ll have the opportunity to get answers personally from Dave and I. Sign up here and use the code “CYBER“ for a 50% discount today, we don't discount Ecomcrew Premium any time else during the year, so register as soon as you can!

Curious about Premium? Find out how it can help you add more products to your catalog or leverage Facebook for marketing. Send us an email at support@ecomcrew.com for more information. 

Happy Selling! 

Mike and Lazada founder Pierre Poignant talk about the differences in ecommerce philosophies between the East and the West.

Born out of the digital revolution, Lazada is one of the largest ecommerce platforms in Southeast Asia.

In this episode, I sit down with Lazada Co-Founder and former CEO, Pierre Poignant, to talk about how he saw a massive opportunity for digital retail in Southeast Asia, how Lazada operates smoothly across international borders, and how they scaled the company after being acquired by Alibaba. 

Pierre also shares some valuable insights on the ecommerce principles in the East that could work for many sellers in the West, as well as how he’s helping sellers grow their brands through his new company.

Audio Timestamps:

• Intro - 0:00
• How Pierre got started with building Lazada - 2:43
• How Lazada was founded - 5:41
• How Lazada manages logistics all over Southeast Asia - 9:59
• Being acquired by Alibaba - 12:56
• Leaving Lazada and starting a new venture - 15:29
• Ecommerce philosophies in the east that could work in the west - 17:09
• Branded’s business model and core philosophy - 18:37
• The next ecommerce revolution - 22:03

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Pierre as much as I have, and I definitely can’t wait to have him back a couple of years from now to see how far Branded has come along. If you want to learn more about their services, head over to their website, joinbranded.com or connect with Pierre on LinkedIn.

Don’t forget to leave us a review over on iTunes if you enjoy our content, and as always, happy selling and we’ll see you in the next one!

Ten episodes ago, I talked about some of the math involved in running an ecommerce business. Episode 250 ended up being one of our most impactful episodes to date.

So I thought it would be a good idea to do a deep dive on all the essentials of ecommerce accounting. To do this effectively, I needed to have an expert on board to break down all these things with me.

Luckily, I sat next to Scott Scharf and his wife at a dinner during this year's Ecommerce Fuel Live and he agreed to come on the show.

A Little Bit about Scott

Scott Scharf is the co-founder of Catching Clouds, an accounting services company that caters specifically to online businesses. Through the company, he’s worked with ecommerce entrepreneurs for nearly eight years, helping them stay on track financially.

What We Covered

In this episode, Scott and I go full Ecommerce Accounting 101. Here are some of the basic concepts and terminologies discussed.

• The most important function of accounting is to have financials you can look at on a daily or monthly basis that will tell you how your business is doing.
• Profit & Loss Statement (P&L) - all the components that make up your top-line revenue; also called an income statement. An example would be Amazon sales.
• Cost to Goods Sold (COGS) - shows how much it costs to create, ship, and sell a product/widget. Shipping cost would be included here.
• Subtracting COGS from P&L would give you the Gross Profit.
• Subtracting your operation expenses (e.g. payroll) from Gross Profit would give you your Net Profit.
• Balance Sheet - a report of the company’s assets (e.g. inventory, money in the bank) and liabilities (e.g. business loans).

Listen to the entire podcast to get a grasp of all these accounting basics to make your better sense of your financials.

EcomCrew Premium is opening on June 26th through July 1st. Pre-register today so you can have access to tools that can help jumpstart your online business.

We’re having a free webinar tomorrow! Learn email marketing fundamentals and hear us talk about our favored strategies to capturing emails and building your list.

Subscribe to the 5 Minute Pitch podcast and get the chance to win over $5K in prizes.

Want a physical copy of our tried-and-tested Amazon launch strategy complete with examples and screenshots?  Get your free book here.

Join season two of the 5 Minute Pitch by filling out and submitting the application form.

Finally, if you enjoyed listening and think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!

The Ecom Crew Podcast welcomes guest Dave Bryant to this episode. Dave is an ecommerce veteran who shares his experience with us. Dave has been importing goods for 10 years now. He grew his business to 2 million and sold it.

He tells us how he did it and why he began his blog Chinese Importing. Dave has been doing business in China during 2008. So, he has some really useful information for new e commerce sellers and sellers who want to expand.

Here are today’s points:

• How Dave got started in ecommerce.
• Why trade shows are valuable to ecommerce sellers.
• The pros and cons of 3PLs.
• The 3 things you should do to grow your profitability.
• Dave’s opinion on Amazon and my opposing view.

Dave’s site Chineseimporting.com teaches ecom sellers how to find good products in China and the process of packaging an Amazon worthy product. He is also offering a discount to Ecom Crew listeners for his course “Importing from China.” If you enter “ecomcrew” into the promo box during checkout you’ll get 25% off the course price.

Resources Mentioned Today:

eCommercefuel

Canton Fair

Amazon

Chineseimporting.com

Ecom Crew Facebook Page

If you have any questions or anything you’d like us to discuss on the podcast please go to ecomcrew.com and fill out the contact form. Also we would really appreciate if you would leave us a review on iTunes. Thanks for listening!

In February, we raked in a total of  $621,816, compared to March's revenue numbers, where we broke past the $700,000 barrier. IceWraps continues the upward trend in sales, but one thing remains to be a source of difficulty: logistics.

All in all, several factors played into this outcome, but the increase in freight rates continues to be a headache.

That’s it for our Brand Report for March 2022. While we’re certainly hoping for better days, March was definitely the best so far.

If you want to see a more detailed and comprehensive breakdown of our revenue numbers for the past few months, check out the blog post up on our website.

Don’t forget to leave us a review over on iTunes if you enjoy our podcast. Tune in next month for our April Brand Report. Till then, happy selling and we’ll see you in the next one!

Welcome to E336 of the EcomCrew podcast! After a long time, Dave and I are finally doing a podcast together, and we’re talking about something juicy.

Some big players in Amazon recently had charges filed against them, which exposed some of the illegal practices sellers do to get their listings to rank higher. In a saturated market such as Amazon, some people are bound to resort to black hat tactics.

If there’s any lesson from this indictment, it’s that illegal acts will eventually get exposed, so it’s best to stick to white hat tactics to save you the trouble.

We’re not lawyers and we won’t even attempt to give any legal opinions about this. We’re looking at this news from an Amazon seller’s point of view. In this episode, you’re going to hear us express our frustrations and concerns regarding these practices because any Amazon seller knows that these have been around for quite some time.

Specifically, we talk about

• What sellers should be concerned about regarding the indictment - 4:08
• How they got Amazon accounts suspended - 5:48
• Breakdown of the indictment - 7:28
• Techniques they use to unsuspend their accounts - 8:08
• Using firms to help Amazon sellers get their accounts unsuspended - 11:15
• Suspension problems of some of our EcomCrew Premium members - 13:20
• Ramifications of having your account suspended - 17:30
• Competitor sabotage and how they managed to do it for years - 20:42
• How they hacked pages of competitors to get ahead - 22:18
• Mike’s concern regarding the morality of these practices 23:30
• The difficulty of pressing charges against international sabotagers - 26:24
• Why more people from third-world countries take the risk in these illegal acts - 27:43
• Deleting tracking information to reflect that the inventory was lost - 31:00
• Bribing employees to increase their storage limits - 31:57
• Making a plan of action that is not intended to be followed through to get an account unsuspended - 34:00
• Getting another seller’s supplier invoice and selling it to competitors - 36:58
• Should sellers be worried? - 40:24
• The difficulty of choosing only white hat tactics - 43:25

For more information regarding this topic, check out the article Dave wrote about the indictment.

We’d also love for you to join us on our free webinar on October 14, 2020, at 10 AM (PST). We’re going to be talking about how we successfully imported high-quality products from China and we’re going to share our secrets when it comes to negotiating with suppliers and making sure that our products meet our specifications and quality standards.

If you liked this episode, please leave us a review over on iTunes.

Did you know that you're entitled to reimbursements from Amazon for lost / damaged inventory within Amazon FBA? Mike and Yoni, the CGO of GETIDA, discuss everything you need to know about reimbursements and auditing. 

Check out GETIDA with our affiliate link!

According to last year's Software Poll, a whopping 37% of sellers are NOT using a reimbursement service of any kind. As Yoni mentions in today's episode, that is not only a significant loss in cost, but also a loss in potential profit margins that you could have gained. 

Yoni Mazor is today's guest, and the CGO of GETIDA, one of the biggest companies out there specializing in Auditing and Reimbursements for Amazon Sellers. We talk about the common mistakes that Amazon makes, how you can claim reimbursements from Amazon for free, and the amount of inventory lost in Amazon FBA on today's episode. 

If you've ever been reclassified into a different FBA size tier, (which is extremely common) then this episode is definitely for you. Here are some chapter markers: 

• 0:00 - Introduction 
• 1:02 - Amazon Is Stealing Money From You
• 2:57 - Why Amazon Is Better Than Other Marketplaces with Reimbursements 
• 4:13 - "What is Amazon infamous for, and what can you do about it?"
• 5:50 - "What Percentage of Shipments Are Lost?"
• 9:07 - How To Claim Reimbursements From Amazon and Make Money
• 11:55 - GETIDA: Pricing, ROI and Return of Frustration
• 18:12 - Mike's Latest Inventory Issue
• 20:16 - "What Else Can You Get Reimbursed For?"
• 25:08 - Why Reimbursement Services Are Worth It
• 26:31 - Where did GETIDA's name come from?

If anything, I'd like for you to walk away with the fact that having a reimbursement service is no longer optional, and that you're leaving money on the table if not. If you’re interested in GETIDA, check out our affiliate link here! 

Don’t forget to leave us a review on iTunes if you enjoy our content. If you have any questions, send us an email at support@ecomcrew.com. We'd love to help you in any way we can. 

Thanks for listening!

Insurance is not a fun topic. Trust me, I hate it as much as the next guy. 

But you know what else is not fun? Having your business go under because of a frivolous lawsuit that has absolutely nothing to do with you or your company.

That is why today, Maggie Walden and I will be talking about one of the best things you can do to protect your business from exhausting (not to mention, expensive) lawsuits and accidents—taking out insurance.

Maggie is a Client Advisor at ECM Solutions, an independent insurance agency that offers a range of coverage options to e-commerce business owners and prepares them for when that fateful day comes.

In this episode, we talk about why an insurance policy is a must-have for serious e-commerce sellers, what different coverage options are available to you, and why insurance carriers won’t be racing to insure certain product types.

Timestamps:

• Amazon’s insurance requirements and why you should comply with them - 05:29
• Things you should be looking at in terms of insurance - 07:24
• What a general liability policy covers and what it does not - 09:31
• Why it’s hard to find insurance for certain certain products or categories - 13:30
• Why I think getting an insurance policy is essential in e-commerce - 15:35
• What an inventory insurance policy is - 23:29
• What a business owner’s policy or BOP is - 26:25

There’s definitely a lot of ground to cover in protecting your business from frivolous litigation and accidents, and Maggie was just the right person to have on the show.

If you want some solid advice about what your exposure looks like and how you can go about taking out an insurance policy over your e-commerce business, be sure to check out ECM Solutions or hit Maggie up on 704-227-3130.

By the way, if you’re looking to stay ahead of the competition and amp up your e-commerce game, EcomCrew Premium opens again on March 8. Don’t miss out!

With Premium, you get access to a bevy of perks, from HD video courses, to exclusive monthly webinars, to 1-on-1 mentorship.

Learned a thing or two from this episode? Let us know, and don’t forget to leave us a review over on iTunes so we can reach more e-commerce sellers looking to grow their business.

Until the next one, happy selling!

It’s a new month and change is coming to the EcomCrew Podcast. 

If you haven’t listened to last Thursday’s goals update, I talked about us reducing the number of episodes in a week from two to one. We want to provide you with the best possible content and, in order to do that, it was a decision to go for quality over quantity.

Today’s episode is something that I believe fits the bill. As entrepreneurs, we tend to fall prey to our own success. The struggle to keep up with growth often means that our cash flow takes a beating. Affording inventory can become a real problem. 

This is why I’m excited to have Kickfurther CEO Sean de Clerq and VP of Business Development David Koifman on the show. 

Kickfurther is a platform that brings together businesses with inventory funding needs and individuals looking to grow their money on ecommerce. The platform helps cash-strapped businesses grow by raising funds from individual buyers to pay for the business' next order. When the business sells the inventory successfully, the individual buyers get paid and earn a profit.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How a Kickstarter campaign and Sean's financing problem gave birth to the idea of Kickfurther - 2:34
• How Kickfurther deals first came together - 8:23
• How Sean found early backers who trusted their brand-new platform - 10:35
• Criteria for a business to be on the platform - 19:08
• Step-by-step process for a business to get funding - 23:53
• Timeline for a business to get funding  - 28:13
• Kickfurther's finance charges - 29:59
• What returns have been historically for investors - 36:22
• Risk factors - 44:38
• Consignment setup - 48:44
• Special Kickfurther deal for EcomCrew listeners - 53:43

If you want to try out Kickfurther for yourself, head over to ecomcrew.com/kickfurther.

Learn how to develop defensible and winning products you can build your business around. Sign up for this month’s free webinar.

Get a copy of the Amazon Domination book here. 

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!

"Seeing all these things that other people ... are doing, especially the black hat sellers, and not being able to beat them by using my white hat tactics--it's a very brutal position to be in. But the thing is, one day, I want to be left with a chair when the music stops and they won't." - Mike Jackness on his long-term Amazon launch strategy

Earlier this year we came upon a chilling situation--more and more sellers are employing black hat tactics to try to win more sales on newly launched products. With so much competition on Amazon it's very tempting to do the same, even though we all know it's against Amazon's TOS and doing so is very much like playing with fire.

And we all know what happens when Amazon finds out. I haven't been suspended before, but I know what it's like to suddenly lose so much money overnight because the platform you depend on decided to basically kick you out. I've heard of so many dreadful stories of Amazon killing accounts and leaving sellers in the dumpster. I don't want this to happen to me--I certainly don't want to be stuck with a million dollar's worth of gel pens I can't pay bills with.

So I got to thinking, what does amazon really want? If I need to win in this without risking my account, I need to think of a long-term strategy that plays by Amazon's rules.

That's how I came up with the strategy that we've been using to launch our newer products. We've started to get some real traction, and with this success, we decided we will be using this strategy moving forward to 2018.

In this episode I talk about exactly how we plan to launch products next year, step by step. A word of warning though: this does not involve fast and easy tricks and gimmicks--this strategy takes longer, but is every bit worth it.

Here's the  breakdown of what I discuss:

• The why and the how of building an email list off of Amazon
• Reaching out to customers in a way that is not against Amazon TOS
• The purpose of contests and giveaways
• Using ClickFunnels to offer upsells to people who joined the contests (I will email my ClickFunnels landing pages to you for FREE when you sign up through our affiliate link)
• Using free plus shipping offers
• Developing a 5-star product
• How to properly use Amazon PPC when launching a product

If you decide to try out ClickFunnels and want a copy of our landing pages, send us an email to let us know. ClickFunnels has made it really easy to share pages, so sign up here if you haven't done so.

Resources mentioned:

AsiaInspection
Stamped.io
ClickFunnels

If you found this episode useful, let us know by leaving a review on iTunes or by leaving a comment below. Thanks so much for listening, and until next episode, happy selling!

This is Part 2 of last Monday's Under the Hood pilot episode. We'd like to thank Brad for bravely coming on the podcast to talk about his business, essentially becoming a guinea pig for our new segment.

If you're interested in getting at least an hour of free coaching too (and getting featured in a podcast episode), sign up to be an Under the Hood guest here.

During Part 1 Brad and I discussed his business in detail, painting a clear picture of where his business stands right now and where he wants the business to go in the future. I had an insight on the strengths and weaknesses of his business and then developed a customized and specific strategy for him to achieve his desired growth.

We get down into the meat and potatoes in this episode. I explain to him in detail the strategy I developed and how to execute it properly. As a sneak peak, the strategy encompasses the following:

• Email marketing. We discussed emails that actually contain value, not just marketing material. We also discussed list segmentation and abandoned cart sequence.
• Facebook ads. I explained to him Facebook remarketing campaigns.
• Google product listing ads
• Utilizing Houzz, a platform for home remodeling and design
• Amazon. Brad needs to step us his Amazon game to reach his revenue goal relatively easier.
• We also talked about hiring and the explosive growth that usually comes with hiring the first employee.

Brad's business has the potential for explosive growth. Our conversation is chock-full of information and we hope the strategy and recommendations we talked about can help set his business, and yours too, on the right path.

Resources mentioned:

Stamped.io
AsiaInspection
E110: Under the Hood with Brad Bernhart Part 1
Under the Hood

As always, thanks for listening to the EcomCrew Podcast. Until next episode, happy selling!

Last week I talked about Sellers Summit. This week I want to talk about the presentation I gave at Sellers Summit. I won’t be able to cover all of my presentation, but if you want to see the full presentation you can find it at ecomcrew.com/summit2017. You will also find a link for the Sellers Summit Pass. The link offers a discount for our Ecom Crew listeners. 

My point in this presentation and this episode is to change your view on getting sales and building an audience. I will share the numbers from my promotions this past year and maybe give you some insight on why they worked. If you take anything away from this episode, it’s this, put the value to the customer first, it will go a long way. 

Here’s what I covered on today’s episode: 

• Sellers Summit 2017
• Why you need to bring your customers value.
• How building relationships are good for sales.
• The benefits of email marketing.
• What is a lead magnet?
• Our best lead magnets.
• My advice for offering value to your customers. 

To really get the full picture of what I’m talking about, go to our Facebook page. I have some really helpful slides for this episode that you can’t see any other way. 

Resources Mentioned:

Ecom Crew

Ecom Crew Facebook Page

20 Free ColorIt Downloads

Colorit.com

Klaviyo

If you have any questions or anything you’d like us to discuss on the podcast please go to ecomcrew.com and fill out the contact form. Also, we would really appreciate if you would leave us a review on iTunes. Thanks for listening!

This is an episode I wish we didn't have to record.

Competition on Amazon is getting stiffer and stiffer and some sellers, in order to succeed, use the short cut and employ black-hat tactics--killing the business of other sellers mercilessly, if need be.

In this episode we discuss in detail how these black-hat tactics work. I invited three Amazon sellers who actually went through the grueling experience of being victims to competitors who have no moral compass. We are doing this in the hopes that we spread awareness of what is happening, especially since Amazon doesn't seem to care much.

Below is an overview what we discussed:

• How Kevin Chen, who sells items in the health and beauty market, fell victim to fake reviews and fake comments on nearly all of his reviews
• How Chris Nowak, founder of My PPC Pal, got accused of selling counterfeits of a product he developed and manufactured himself
• Robert Weisberg's baffling case against Amazon itself (or someone selling via Amazon Vendor Express)
• How they tried to resolve their cases and how Amazon responded (spoiler alert: they weren't of any help at all)

Lately we noticed that these black hat practices are getting more and more prevalent. What's sad is Amazon mostly only cares about buyers and much less about sellers. It seems that they are okay with letting honest sellers lose, as long as they get their commissions.

We want to spread as much awareness as possible about what's happening, and if we band together, we can make a big difference.

Resources mentioned:

Stamped.io
AsiaInspection
Million Dollar Private Label Pros
My PPC Pal

Want to get an hour of free coaching from Mike and Dave? Sign up at ecomcrew.com/underthehood.

Thanks for listening!

It’s almost the end of July and we’re down to the last episode of Women’s Month. I’ve had a great time chatting and learning from all these incredible women.

Today’s guest is a returnee to the EcomCrew Podcast. Dana Jaunzemis is the founder of HomeHealthtesting.com. She has a solid accounting background. She and I have been friends for years and was in one of my earliest podcast episodes where we talked about ecommerce growth and profitability.

In this episode, she and I discuss the importance of ecommerce accounting and how to make more money out of existing sales.

Dana shares her thoughts on the following:

• Percentage of women involved in ecommerce (3:29)
• The importance of liking and respecting your customer base (10:19)
• The joys of being an ecommerce entrepreneur (12:01)
• Approaching ecommerce accounting at the micro-level; essential data points (22:35)

Aside from her core business, Dana also blogs about her experiences as an entrepreneur on 44ideas.net.

TOOLS MENTIONED:

• Sellics
• HelloProfit

This episode is part of our Women’s Month celebration. We’d love to see more women in the ecommerce industry, so if you are a female business owner, head over to www.ecomcrew.com/underthehood and tell us your story. We’d love to feature you on the podcast.

Starting an Amazon business today is a completely different ball game compared to starting to sell in 2015. These days, you'll need more than just good-looking listings and great copy to hit that highly 7 or 8-figure revenue milestone.

I've invited fellow MDS member and 8-figure seller Talor Zamir to tell us exactly how he's built multiple businesses up to the 8-figure mark, how he got started in the ecommerce industry and the valuable lessons he's learnt along the way. He's also got some tips in store for those of you who are thinking of starting something new for 2023. 

Don't have the time to listen through the whole episode? We've got you covered. Here's some of the highlights from the episode: 

• Introduction to Talor Zamir - 1:22 
• How Talor differentiated products in his first business - 9:45 
• What Talor's best performing businesses had in common - 15:53
• Talor's Differentiation Strategy #2 - Earning your customers trust - 18:52 
• Why Mike started the Ecomcrew Podcast - 25:13 
• Talor's Differentiation Strategy #3 - 27:23 
• How much time Talor spent between selling and starting businesses - 29:25 
• What Talor's working on currently - 34:00 

The lessons here are definitely something everyone should take into consideration before starting your business. No matter how attractive it might seem to sell any product with a high search volume, the riches are in the niches and the best niches are the ones where you can see yourself as the ideal customer. 

This advice may seem obvious to the experienced seller, so I'll echo out a piece of advice for those with mid-sized businesses: do a lot of thinking time. Spend some time outside of the daily work to-do list to think about what you can do to take your brand to the next level. 

I won't spoil anymore for the episode, but hopefully this convinces you to listen through the whole thing. However, if you're more interested in what Talor has to say after hearing his story, check out the Peak Performance Life Podcast where he speaks with physical and mental health experts on how you can start prioritizing your health better. 

Lastly, big things are happening this week with EcomCrew Premium. We’re going to be launching for the last time in 2022, and this is going to be our biggest sale ever! On top of the heavily discounted rate, we’re giving an additional 20% off to those who register for our waitlist.

Today we discuss part 2 of how to move your traffic off Amazon. Last time we discussed the reasons why you should want to move off Amazon.

Today’s topic is SEO (Search Engine Optimization.) Now, SEO is tricky stuff and you can get in trouble really quick. We discuss our background in SEO and how to do everything “white hat.”

Topics we covered today:

• A recap of part 1 of this topic.
• Grant’s business update.
• Mike’s business update.
• Why leaving Amazon is difficult.
• The struggles of 3PLS and other shipping issues.
• Why you shouldn’t “black hat” SEO.
• The usefulness of PPC (Pay Per Click.)
• The downside of Ebay.
• Grant’s SEO tips.
• How you get what you pay for in SEO.
• Why you shouldn’t expect overnight results from SEO.
• Why most people don’t understand SEO.
• Mike’s SEO advice.
• Why you need to be an expert on your business.
• Why we emphasize SEO.
• The role of marketing in your business.
• Mike’s plans with Wal-Mart.
• Retail business vs. Online business
• What to expect in parts 3 and 4.

There are some grey areas with SEO, but hopefully our episode will convince you to leave that stuff alone. This series has been expanded to 4 parts. We will continue to record these episodes on Facebook Live, so if you want like our page on Facebook, you can watch our live streams and talk to us after the episode.

Resources Mentioned During Today’s Episode:

Icewraps.com

Colorit.com

Cuttingboard.com

If you have any questions or anything you’d like us to discuss on the podcast please go to ecomcrew.com and fill out the contact form. Also we would really appreciate if you would leave us a review on iTunes. Thanks for listening!

Hey this is Mike, I’m going to be doing a solo podcast today. Grant had business to tend to, so we’re going to put a hold on our series about Getting Off Amazon. Instead, I’m going to talk about ColorIt and  our plans for the holiday season. This episode may be a little late to the party, but there is still some value in it.

We at ColorIt started planning for the holidays at least 6 months ago. So these plans have been in the works for a while. I’ll give you some tips I learned from ColorIt’s first holiday season and what sort of promotions and deals you can expect from ColorIt this holiday season.

Today’s Topics:

• Why you should start planning for the holidays 6 months out.
• How to avoid running out of inventory.
• Remember to stock up through Chinese New Year.
• My ECommerceFuel Live Talk
• Our holiday lead magnet on ColorIt.
• How we use Facebook in our marketing.
• Our Black Friday information.
• The 12 Days of Christmas Promotion
• The importance of Organic Engagement.

Remember we do a live podcast on our Facebook page every Monday, If you like our Facebook page at Facebook.com/ecomcrew you can join us for the episodes.

Resources Mentioned Today:

ECommerceFuel Live Conference

Ecom Crew Facebook Page

ColorIt

ColorIt.com/christmas

ColorIt.com/pages/bfcm2016

If you have any questions or anything you’d like us to discuss on the podcast please go to ecomcrew.com and fill out the contact form. Also we would really appreciate if you would leave us a review on iTunes. Thanks for listening!

Today’s episode is about going from running your business out of your home to a warehouse. We have our own growing pains stories on this topic, so we hope we can help those of you ready to move.

The key factor to maintaining a warehouse is efficiency. A lot of things go into making sure your operation is efficient. You need to make sure the items are safely packed for shipping (which is harder than you expect) and that your inventory can keep up with demand. We’re going to share with you some of our fixes for these problems. As well as what has worked for us, and what hasn’t.

Topics we discuss in this episode:

• Grant’s trial and error experience with packing his cutting boards.
• The importance of keeping shipping damage low
• Mike’s decision to move into FBA through Amazon
• Working with Amazon
• Finding a good fulfillment software

At the end of the day it comes down to what you need to make your business work. Some of our suggestions are pretty pricey for a start-up, but for middle tier outfits it might be a solution. Efficiency is the keyword today and hopeful we have given you some great resources.

Resources Mentioned During Today’s Episode:

Colorit.com

Treadmill.com

Cuttingboard.com

Icewraps.com

Amazon

ShipStation

Stitch Labs

The Definitive Ecommerce Inventory Management Comparison

Skubana

Bigcommerce

Shopify

Linnworks

If you have any questions or anything you’d like us to discuss on the podcast please go to ecomcrew.com and fill out the contact form. Also we would really appreciate if you would leave us a review on iTunes. Thanks  for listening!

For those who missed Monday's episode, David Wilson is our Under the Hood guest who enjoyed massive sales growth right before suddenly experiencing a plateau. He tried regaining growth by increasing ad spend, to the point that his profits were in danger of drying up. He needs cost-effective ways to get his sales back on pace, and that is what we talk about in this episode.

On Monday's episode, David and I talked about the basic things he needs to take care of before he can move on to actual growth strategies, which is delegation. We talked about his need to hire VAs and let Amazon FBA handle his inventory so he can have some free time to focus on high-level tasks that only he can do.

Today we get into the "meat and potatoes"--the actual strategies David needs to employ to boost his sales. In particular we talk about the following, among others:

• Improving product photography
• Utilizing all listing image space provided by Amazon
• Using infographics
• Shooting lifestyle videos and photos
• Enhanced brand content
• Running promotions and giveaways
• Choosing a modern Shopify theme
• Utilizing influencer marketing
• Expanding to Amazon EU and Canada

I hope you got valuable practical advice from my conversation with David. If you'd like to get a one-on-one coaching session with me and be featured on the podcast, join our Under the Hood program here.

Resources mentioned:

Splitly
Famebit
SimplyVAT
Pacific Customs Brokers

Thanks for listening! Until next week, happy selling.

In this episode, Dave talks about the potential impacts of Donald Trump's presidency on e-commerce, focusing on tariffs, currency fluctuations, and whether big tech companies like Amazon will still be under scrutiny from FTC. 

Today's episode is sponsored by Autron. Maximize your ROI with Autron’s real-time algorithmic bidding, optimizing every ad dollar for smarter spending and higher returns. Start optimizing today and get 30% off for 3 months!

Sign up to get early access a special bonus offer for our BFCM Deal.

We'll be having the biggest deal of the year on our Develop a Profitable Product course + Advanced Amazon Market course + an amazing discount AND a big bonus for those who signup for the waitlist here.

Takeaways

• Trump's presidency will almost 100% signify a tariff on all international imports.
• Companies will have no choice but to either increase their prices, absorb the cost, or to look at sourcing locally.
• Other than that, expect higher freight costs in the near term. Almost everyone will be placing more orders before tariffs are implemented, which will spike up freight costs.
• Big tech will certainly be affected too.
• Trump's stance on TikTok has softened.
• Amazon and Trump have a rough relationship, and its unlikely that Trump will ease their FTC issues.

Chapters

• 00:00 - The Impact of Trump's Presidency on E-Commerce
• 10:10 - Tariffs and Their Implications for E-Commerce
• 14:27 - Currency Fluctuations and Economic Strategies
• 18:15 - Big Tech and E-Commerce Dynamics
• 20:24 - Digital Taxes and Global Trade Relations

As always, if you have any questions or anything that you need help with, reach out to us at support@ecomcrew.com if you're interested. 

Don’t forget to leave us a review on iTunes if you enjoy our content. If you have any questions, send us an email at support@ecomcrew.com. We'd love to help you in any way we can. 

Thanks for listening!

Until next time, happy selling!

In this episode of the EcomCrew podcast, I’m joined by Michael Epstein, one of the co-founders of PostPilot, a company that helps e-commerce businesses by using direct mail marketing to create memorable customer experiences to increase sales.

We also discuss how PostPilot started and the idea behind going back to physical postcards to advertise products, discounts, and services. We also talk about how companies have been faring after subscribing to their services.

Timestamps:

• 2:07 — Introduction 

• 6:37 — Inspiration behind PostPilot 

• 8:40  — How to reacquire customers who churned

• 10:16 — New features PostPilot’s been working on 

• 14:24 — Internal benchmarks to measure for future campaigns

• 17:48 — Tactics/incentives to reacquire old customers

• 24:15 — How to use lookalike audience attributes to refine ROAS

• 27:17 — Abandon cart win-back campaigns

• 29:15 — Minimum threshold for companies before hitting a benchmark

• 30:38 — PostPilot’s exclusive offering to EcomCrew members

Thank you so much to Michael for doing this week’s podcast episode with me after I had his co-founder Drew on the podcast a few years ago and learned so much about the growth of their business and their plans for the future.

He was also so kind for giving EcomCrew members freebies in their first few months when they sign up on PostPilot.

If you want to learn more about their business, you can check them out on PostPilot.com.

Don’t forget to leave us a review over on iTunes if you enjoyed this episode. Until the next one, happy selling!

Mike Jackness and Ecomcrew's brand manager, Ben Iballa, review the episodes that made the top 10 list of the year and share their thoughts on each one. 

2023 was a wild ride. I let go of most of his brands, while costs on Amazon increased by a LOT. 

Here's a roundup of the top 10 episodes of the year. Some of the best of the year includes when I sold most of his e-commerce business, the rising costs of selling on Amazon, and my perspective on retiring. 

Here's some timestamps to help you along: 

• 0:00 - Introduction
• 0:43 - Top 10 Episodes of 2023
• 3:25 - Year in Review
• 4:02 - Episode 10
• 7:08 - Episode 9
• 8:30 - Episode 8
• 9:43 - Episode 7
• 11:39 - Episode 6
• 13:25 - Episode 5
• 15:27 - Episode 4
• 17:25 - Episode 3
• 20:57 - Episode 2
• 23:14 - Episode 1

I want to thank everyone for supporting the EcomCrew Podcast. Whether you’ve been with us from the start or are just tuning in, I appreciate your time and feedback. I’m sure 2024 will be another year of insightful podcast episodes, and I can’t wait to unpack which ones top the charts next time around. 

As always, if you have any questions or anything that you need help with, reach out to us at support@ecomcrew.com if you're interested. 

Don’t forget to leave us a review on iTunes if you enjoy our content. If you have any questions, send us an email at support@ecomcrew.com. We'd love to help you in any way we can. 

Happy selling! 

Happy Monday! I hope that you’re doing well and staying safe in these crazy times. 

Keeping an ecommerce business afloat while also going through a pandemic is quite the challenge. With the borders closed, Amazon FBA services delayed and most 3PLs either closed or working at low capacity, it’s definitely a challenging start to the year for most, if not all of us entrepreneurs. 

One thing that’s going to help some of these businesses stay afloat is looking for investors. 

So in today’s episode, I sit down and talk to Andrew Youderian, a friend of the show who just recently launched a new project: Ecommerce Fuel Capital, and how it can help some businesses stay afloat in these hard times. We talk about what Ecommerce Fuel Capital exactly is, the people who’ve partnered up with Andrew, and specifically, the characteristics that Andrew’s looking for in a business to invest in. 

I’ve done an episode on the Podcast before about the criteria I’m looking for, but in this episode, Andrew and I discuss in-depth about the several factors that both of us chose. 

I think that today’s episode will definitely be insightful. People who are new to the industry will know about the characteristics that their businesses should strive for, while seasoned entrepreneurs can take a peek into what Andrew and I are thinking of when looking at businesses to acquire. 

If you’re looking to sell your business, and you feel like your business fits these categories, feel free to message me at support@ecomcrew.com. 

Are you an ecommerce seller that’s hit the million dollar revenue mark? Through Ecommerce Fuel, you’ll be able to find and talk to several other experienced sellers to discuss strategies, share Amazon woes, and learn several tips to edge out your competition. Find out more here! 

Keeping track of your Amazon business doesn’t have to be difficult. Through JungleScout, you can find everything you need in one place! JungleScout is the all-in-one tool to use when keeping track of your brands, and is something we still use today. You can learn more about JungleScout in this course where Greg Mercer and I go over product, keyword AND supplier research for all of those that wish to start entering a new niche, along with so much more. Sign up to learn more.

Thanks for listening to this episode!

Until the next one,
Stay Safe!

This year is speeding by as we're already in March! Hello from Irvine, California and Happy March everybody! 

A few episodes ago, I put out an episode saying that I was interested in buying a business, and one of the interested sellers is today's lucky guest. Our guest is Jake Starr, the owner of Recycled Firefighter -- a brand that makes everyday carry items out of recycled firefighter gear, taken across America. 

We talk about several things; how the business was born out of a need to support his family, and how that business quickly took a life of its own. As crazy as it sounds, he's looking to sell his business or looking into getting a partner and we get into the reasons why he feels like it's time to either loosen his grip, or let go. 

Don't miss out on our free webinar on March 11th 10am PST, where Dave and I will be talking about Importing from China in 2020. We'll be addressing the elephant in the room -- the Corona virus, and how it's affecting the businesses of millions around the world, Amazon Dragonboat and the updates on tariffs as the new year picks up the pace. Register now!

Get to know the mistakes the giants made and the best practices they recommend to sustain a successful ecommerce business.

In the course of building a business, it is fairly common for entrepreneurs to make mistakes along the way.

If you learn from them, it can still be considered a win, but you don’t always have to make the mistakes yourself to be able to learn from them. 

In this episode, our returning guest Gary Huang shares the 10 things he learned after interviewing more than a dozen 7-figure sellers.

Gary has worked with some of the industry’s leaders in building successful ecommerce brands. He is the founder and host of Seven Figure Seller Summit, an online event that helps ecommerce companies level up their businesses to that 7 Figure Checkpoint.

He's also founded 80/20 Sourcing, which assists entrepreneurs in sourcing their products from China efficiently and cost-effectively, so Gary's definitely got some experience under his belt. 

In this episode, Gary talks about:

• How 7 figure sellers get around excuses
• Using tools outside of Amazon to find profitable products
• Applying the 80/20 rule to increase profits without sacrificing the important things
• Building a superstar team
• Building a brand the white hat way
• Avoiding the idiot tax
• Using metrics to know what works and what doesn’t
• Split testing ideas
• The importance of focusing on profits, not revenues
• Being smart about your business to increase your selling multiple

If you want to hear more from Gary Huang or the awesome event that is the 7 Figure Seller Summit, you can visit his site here or reach him at gary@8020sourcing.com.

Enjoying the Ecomcrew podcast so far?

We’re always looking for ways to improve, and we hope you could help us out. All you need to do is fill out this survey. It’ll only take about 3 minutes, I promise.

As a thank you, we will be giving away our courses bundle valued at over $4000 to one lucky respondent. You’ll get over 16 hours of useful ecommerce tips and techniques that you’ll get to keep forever.

You can check out a list of the courses here.

If you learned something from this episode, please leave us a review on iTunes. We’d love to hear what you think.

Until the next one,
Stay safe and happy selling!

In this episode, Dave shows 10 ways you can reduce stupid PPC Spend and maximise efficiency just in time for Prime Day. 

Today's episode is sponsored by Clearco, a company that provides ecommerce businesses with working capital to fund inventory, marketing, shipping and logistics, and more! Check them out today! 

Prime Day 2023 saw people spend up to $12.9bn alone. 

Obviously, everyone wants a piece of the pie. You can expect competitors to increase their ad spend 2x or even 3x more just for the possibility of more sales. To prepare for this year's Prime Day, there are some ways you can maximise the efficiency of your ad spend.

However what these sellers fail to notice is that it's all about maximising efficiency of your running ads. 

That's why my partner-in-crime, Dave Bryant, is on the podcast today to talk about the 10 ways you can maximise your efficiency and reduce ad spend.

Timestamps

• 00:00 - Introduction and Sponsor
• 01:28 - Topic: Reducing PPC Spend on Amazon
• 03:51 - Optimizing Targeting Options in Auto Campaigns
• 05:16 - Optimizing Targeting Options in Manual Campaigns
• 07:37 - Using Dynamic Bids Down Only and Avoiding Broad Match
• 10:30 - Avoiding Ads in Other Countries and Turning Off Sponsored Display
• 13:52 - Unclicking Expanded Product Targeting and Using Exact Match
• 17:44 - Conclusion and Call to Action

The Big Takeaways

• Increasing conversion rates can lower ad costs and improve ROAS.

• Turn off loose match targeting in auto campaigns and optimize targeting options in manual campaigns.

• Use dynamic bids down only and be cautious with broad match keywords.

• Don't let Amazon set up ads in other countries and consider turning off sponsored display campaigns.

• Lowering prices may be a better option than increasing PPC to improve profitability.

As always, if you have any questions or anything that you need help with, reach out to us at support@ecomcrew.com if you're interested. 

Don’t forget to leave us a review on iTunes if you enjoy our content. If you have any questions, send us an email at support@ecomcrew.com. We'd love to help you in any way we can. 

Thanks for listening!

Until next time, happy selling!

Ecommerce is a fast-changing industry, and people rarely ever get that holy grail experience that our guest today has.

Ben Leonard is the founder of Beast Gear, a fitness equipment brand born out of this personal interest in physical activities like crossfit and boxing. In just a span of 3 years, he grew the company to a whopping 7-figure brand and has since sold his business.

He eventually co-founded Ecom Brokers, which is an ecommerce brokerage tailored to helping other sellers follow in his footsteps and get successful exits of their own. 

In this episode, Ben takes me through his entire journey in ecommerce. From discovering his entrepreneurial spark, to developing his brand and a suite of products that people talk about, to selling his business, and all the way to building his own ecommerce brokerage to help other sellers build and sell their businesses. 

I wanna thank Ben for coming to the show and sharing his story. If you’re looking to grow and sell your business for top dollar (just like we have), head over to Ecom Brokers. You may also reach out to Ben on benleonard.pro for even more strategic advice. 

Planning to sell your business in the near future? Let us know, and don’t forget to leave us a review over on iTunes so we can help more ecommerce sellers.

Until the next one, happy selling!

Mike Beckham, a 9 Figure Business Owner, is on the podcast with Mike today to talk about what he'd do differently if he were to start building a 9 figure business all over again. We dive into how and why brand story is so important, and the uncommon mindset Mike Bekham uses to perpetuate business growth.

Its hard enough trying to start an ecommerce business.

Being a solopreneur means you'll have to be on top of your inventory levels, your PPC Campaigns, while also writing blog articles, making Youtube videos about your product and not to mention getting UGC from influencers. 

But what does a 100+ person company look like? Better yet, what did it take to get to be able to sustain that level of overhead? 

We've invited Mike Bekham, the co-founder of Simple Modern and 9 Figure Business Owner, to the podcast to ask him the golden question. If he had to do it all over again, what would he do differently? 

We talk about how being part of a community and choosing the right niche can open up more growth opportunities than you realize, and how building a brand starts internally. 

Here's some timestamps to help you along: 

• 0:00 - Introduction 
• 0:31 - Podcast Start 
• 1:39 - Being a Part of an Amazon Community 
• 6:55 - "What Would You Do Differently?"
• 7:44 - Playing to your strengths 
• 8:34 - Choosing a product niche 
• 14:53 - Product Differentiation
• 17:07 - Differentiation without millions in capital 
• 24:13 - How Mike makes sure everyone's winning 
• 30:42 - What Mike's learned over the years 

Mike, thank you for coming on the podcast and sharing all of the things you'd consider heavily when starting over. I hope that everyone who listens enjoyed the episode as much as I had recording it with you, and wish you well for the rest of the year.  

 If you want to get in touch with Mike, you can find him at Linkedin or you can check out his Twitter. 

If you have any questions or any topics you’d like us to discuss on the podcast, you can now email us directly at support@ecomcrew.com! Also, we would really appreciate it if you would leave us a review on iTunes. 

Thanks for listening!

I’ve been tackling a couple of interesting niches in our last few Under the Hoods. The business we’ll be talking about in this episode is no different.

For this episode, I’ve taken on Colin Grice and his aquarium fertilizer and supply business. Colin has a background in Biology and Chemistry, which enabled him to manufacture his own liquid fertilizers.

Colin’s business had an impressive net profit margin of over $250K derived from a variety of sources. His website ranks on page one for a number of search terms and organic visits and connections to his website and on being an active participant in many Facebook groups. However, he wants to reach more customers through reliable marketing efforts.

Listen in as I give Colin my two cents on getting started in his ecommerce marketing efforts. Some of the strategies we cover include Google Adwords and upping his SEO game by publishing long-form and informative content on his main domain.

Under the Hood is a segment where we do an hour-long coaching call with one of our listeners. We take a look at their businesses, provide honest feedback, offer our best business advice, and answer whatever questions they have. In exchange for the free coaching, we will turn the call into a podcast episode so that our community can benefit as well. It’s a win-win!

We’re opening registration to EcomCrew Premium one last time this year. You can join the waitlist here. Follow our Facebook page for all the latest updates. We’re bringing the rates up for both the Monthly and Annual plans in 2019 so sign up asap.

As always, thanks for listening to this episode! If you enjoyed listening and think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes.’s

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!

Our topic for today is not totally in line with ecommerce, but a bunch of you guys requested it so here we are: Ecomcrew’s one and only episode on cryptocurrency.

The subject is especially interesting since Dave and I aren’t exactly on the same team when it comes to this one, even though we both have experience investing in it.

For this episode, we break down some of the ambiguities surrounding cryptocurrency, how we think it’ll impact the business landscape, and whether or not it’s worth investing in.

Although, just a quick disclaimer: this episode is not, in any way, us giving financial advice; rather, simply our two cents on the matter at hand.

Timestamps: 

• Using cryptocurrency to buy domains - 2:13
• A gray area in sales taxation - 4:45
• Mike’s investment in cryptocurrency - 10:18
• Dave’s qualms about cryptocurrency - 19:55
• How the Internet changed and disrupted businesses - 24:54
• Day trading cryptocurrency - 30:57
• Investing in Bitcoin - 38:08
• The importance of timing in investment - 44:54

Whether or not you choose to invest in cryptocurrency, just remember to never put all your eggs in one basket. After all, risk is part of being in business.

That’s it for this week’s episode. Feel free to leave us a review over on iTunes if you enjoy our content. Happy selling and we’ll see you in the next one!

Wearing many hats as an e-commerce seller isn’t easy, but letting someone else take over a task you’ve been doing for years could be much harder.

If you’re looking to grow your business, though, you will eventually need to hang up some of those hats to focus on your high-level goals. 

In today’s episode, Kevin Sanderson of Maximizing Ecommerce joins me in breaking down some of the struggles and the rewards of offloading workload from your shoulders and fine-tuning your focus as you scale your business. 

Kevin is an Under the Hood alumni. He was our guest in a two-parter, where we talked about how to stop being a bottleneck to your own business and how to delegate tasks to offshore VAs.

Today, we’ll be talking about why you should never compare your Chapter 4 to someone else’s Chapter 25, some clever tricks we use to filter through hundreds of job applicants, and effective ways to offload your tasks and delegate them to a team that you trust. 

Timestamps:

• Why you should give your endeavors some time before giving up - 3:00
• Looking back at our first Under the Hood session - 9:11
• How to effectively offload and delegate your tasks - 12:17
• Simple and effective ways to filter job applications - 17:04 
• Why most of us obsess over the tiniest tasks - 27:24
• What Kevin is up to these days - 33:54
• The value of investing in a team you can trust - 40:09
• Never put in your phone number if you’re online looking at insurance quotes - 43:34
•  

I had a great time talking to Kevin. Check out his awesome content over on Maximizing Ecommerce and tune in to his podcast and YouTube channel.

If you’re interested in having me look under the hood of your e-commerce business in an hour-long coaching call that we turn into a podcast episode, head over to ecomcrew.com/underthehood to sign up.

Speaking of sign-ups, EcomCrew Premium closes tonight! 

Premium membership grants you access to our community of like-minded sellers, unlimited 1-on-1 email support from me and Dave, and a growing library of HD video courses and webinars to help you grow and succeed in e-commerce. Sign up for Premium now. 

Did you enjoy this episode? Don’t forget to leave us a review over on iTunes so we can help more sellers like you.

Until the next one, happy selling!

Last Monday, Kevin and I talked about one of the biggest problems most small ecommerce entrepreneurs encounter: becoming a bottleneck to the growth of their own company. This is something that usually happens when we try to do the unthinkable, which is to do every single task on our own.

Naturally, the best way to solve this is delegation. You can try to be as efficient and productive as you want, but there will only by 24 hours in a day and one body to work with. But how can you find someone you can trust enough and can perform tasks as good as you do without breaking the bank?

That is the question we answer in this episode, which is Part 2 of last Monday's conversation. Kevin and I discuss my VA hiring process, from weeding out spam applications (or applications of people who don't read, which is a lot), what questions to ask, the tests we require applicants to take, training, and how to manage them once they're hired. Ultimately, we talk about how to find a VA who is smart and quick on their feet, who will help him grow his company.

Some conversation points:

• Red flags when hiring VAs
• Filtering irrelevant applications
• My hiring process
• What questions to ask during the interview process
• What kind of experience to look for
• Using Camtasia as a training tool
• Best practices when delegating tasks to a VA

Delegating is not easy, especially if you're assigning tasks to a person who is literally on the other side of the globe. But if you find someone trustworthy and smart, delegation will work wonders not just on your stress levels, but on your business in the long run.

Resources mentioned:

EcomCrew webinar
Under the Hood
Sellers Summit

Thanks so much for listening to this Under the Hood episode! If you want to be in an episode yourself, just sign up here and we'll reach out to you for more details. Until the next episode, happy selling!

In this episode, Dave talks about how you can start developing custom software for Amazon, and what the main benefits are. He'll be covering how to setup custom software, the requirements needed, and the advantages of using third-party APIs to enhance data access. 

The Big Takeaway

• Custom software can significantly enhance Amazon business operations.
• Most off-the-shelf software are mostly perfect; just lacking the necessary customization.
• Third-party APIs can provide valuable data not available through Amazon's main API.
• The Selling Partner API is the latest standard for Amazon integrations.
• AWS costs for API access are generally very low.
• AI advancements have reduced the cost of software development.
• Custom software can provide a competitive edge for Amazon sellers.

Chapters

• 00:00 - Introduction to Custom Amazon Software
• 02:25 - The Need for Custom Solutions
• 05:38 - Setting Up Custom Software
• 10:50 - Understanding the Amazon API
• 12:41 - Getting Started with Development

As always, if you have any questions or anything that you need help with, reach out to us at support@ecomcrew.com if you're interested. 

Don’t forget to leave us a review on iTunes if you enjoy our content. If you have any questions, send us an email at support@ecomcrew.com. We'd love to help you in any way we can. 

Thanks for listening!

Merry Christmas everybody!

We just want to thank you guys for an awesome year, it never would have been possible without you. We did a lot of things that are new to us this year (insert shameless plug for our course) and you've stuck with us through the hiccups, providing us feedback along the way which helped us improve immensely. We can't thank you enough for that.

Since everyone will be on holiday mode for the next couple of days, we figured we'd do the same and take a break on the podcast. This is not a long term break, we're just going to skip 3 episodes and resume on the 4th of January, kicking off the new year with a goal planning episode.

We hope you have a blast during the holidays, and see you again next year!

Welcome to Episode 339 of the EcomCrew podcast! In this episode, we decided to have a little fun by talking about the funny (albeit stressful) customer experiences we had while running our ecommerce business.

Joining me in the podcast is Meredith Erin, co-founder of Boredwalk, a company that sells creative apparel. Meredith started the business in 2014 right in their garage together with her now-husband Matt.

In this episode, you get to hear about some of the things we had to go through in order to keep our customers happy. We laugh about it now, but surely, it caused us some serious problems when we were dealing with them.

Timestamps:

• The Package Stabber - 5:05
• The customer who ordered a shirt in the wrong size - 7:40
• Mr. Impatient - 9:26
• Customers who get mad because the package shipped too fast - 9:59
• Small mailboxes, big packages - 11:28
• The time Mike had to call authorities on a customer - 12:00
• How reasonable are customers in general? - 15:05 
• Advantages of having customer representatives - 18:02 
• Meredith’s bingo card - 21:50
• Customers who can’t tell the difference between navy and black - 22:35
• The effects of politics on a business - 24:10
• Dealing with being open about mental health in product designs - 26:33
• How Meredith dealt with people who hate their designs - 28:50
• What it takes to be an artist an and entrepreneur - 29:46
• The value of hard work in business - 31:11
• The 4-hour workweek myth - 32:36

If you want to spice up your wardrobe, check out Meredith’s company, Boredwalk, and discover your next statement shirt!

***

This November 11 at 10 AM (PST), we will be talking about product differentiation and how you can improve your products to make it stand out from those of your competitors.

Product differentiation is one of our most favorite topics at EcomCrew because it truly makes a difference in terms of revenue as well as the overall customer satisfaction.

This webinar is completely free, so sign up now to reserve your seat.

****

For those of you who haven’t tried EcomCrew Premium yet, now is the perfect time to do so. We will be relaunching on Black Friday, and this will be the last time we’re going to do so in 2020.

We have some sweet deals for you, so don’t miss it! Sign up for the waiting list today.

Last week, Megan and I talked about cash flow and early-stage financing for her ecommerce business. We continue to talk a little bit more about financing in this episode, specifically Amazon loans, then move on to the next big issue: Facebook ads.

Any ecommerce entrepreneur knows how important Facebook ads are in any ecommerce business. However for a business like Megan's which is still at its early stages--and an Amazon-only business at that--focusing on Facebook ads might not be the best idea. Doing Facebook ads at this point might push her to get her own Shopify/BigCommerce store so that she can fully utilize the power of Facebook ads, and that could mean a lot of work, taking her focus off the more important things like Amazon listing optimization and PPC. It boils down to prioritization and not biting off more than what one can chew.

To break things down, here are our conversation points:

• Bank financing
• More on Amazon loan specifics
• How to be laser-focused on what needs to be prioritized for a young ecommerce business
• Why Facebook ads are not recommended for an Amazon-only business
• Focusing on listing optimization, PPC, and brand registry first
• Utilizing the power of YouTubers to promote products

We'd like to thank Megan for this information-packed episode. She runs an ecommerce site called The Bootstrap Boutique and a YouTube channel for ecommerce entrepreneurs. Check them out!

Resources mentioned:

My EcomCrew
Under The Hood Signup
Kabbage
Sellers Summit
My 2018 Goals

If you're interested in becoming an Under The Hood guest yourself, just sign up here. Thanks for listening and happy selling!

It’s Dave doing a solo podcast today. I’ve been giving periodic updates on how my current ecommerce business has been doing so far. Having recently marked two years of owning and running OffRoadingGear.com, another update is due.

If you’re new to the podcast or need a refresher, here are quick links to previous episodes in this series.

• Part 1: Rebuilding a $1million Ecommerce and Importing Business from Scratch
• Part 2: Rebuilding a $1M Ecommerce Business – Finding Products and Suppliers
• Part 3: Rebuilding a $1M Ecommerce Business – First 60 Day Results
• Part 4: Rebuilding a $1M Ecommerce Business – 6 Month Results
• Million Dollar Update – 12 Month Update
• Road to 1M – Dave’s 18th Month Update on His New Ecommerce Business

In this episode, I also let you in on the following:

• Last month’s revenue (1:23)
• How it compares to the previous months (1:57)
• What makes up the $100K revenue (2:57)
• What my product inventory looks like (4:05)
• Product development strategies I use (6:32)
• Having a content website like OffRoading.com (14:45)
• The negatives of running this business (18:04)
• Do I sell or not? (25:11)

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

• Epic 62-step checklist
• Linnworks
• Sellics

Get on the waitlist for EcomCrew Premium here.

Learn more about Helium 10 through this mini-course.

I hope you enjoyed this latest installment of the podcast. As always, feel free to leave a comment below.

If you think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes.

Till the next one. Happy selling!

In this episode, Mike Jackness interviews Michael Kaufman – the CEO of ProTuff Products. We talk about Kaufman's journey in the e-commerce industry, how he differentiates his products by offering an extended warranty and how lifetime warranties guarantees 5 star reviews.

How to Find a Profitable Product Course Open Now

Still struggling to find your next great product? The EcomCrew How to Find a Profitable Course is open now and is just $499 for one week only. We’ll cover everything from using the ‘Cockroach approach’ to developing large and bulky products, avoiding placement fees, and more. Check it out now.

How Do You Use Lifetime Warranties To Guarantee 5 Star Reviews?

As a shopper on Amazon, you've probably bought something that have warranty cards as a part of the products' insert. 

But most companies don't stand behind their warranty policy, or they just straight up have flimsy policies. 

Having a lifetime warranty means that you'll have to approve every warranty that comes in, no matter what. However, the bright side to this is that this almost always guarantees a 5-star review since you will actually be standing behind your own warranty policy. 

The Big Takeaways of Today's Episode

• Offering a lifetime warranty can help differentiate your products and build a solid review profile.
• Automating the warranty registration and claim process can save time and money, since you don't have to hire someone to approve warranties.
• Selling seasonal products can be challenging, but offering incentives for early registration and extending the product's use for other purposes can help mitigate the seasonality.
• Building a list through warranty registration is a TOS-compliant way to communicate with customers on Amazon.
• Choosing the right warranty duration and offering additional benefits can encourage customers to register and leave positive reviews.

Lifetime Warranties Episode Timestamps: 

• 00:00 - Introduction and Small Talk
• 03:14 - ProTuff Products and the Pool Tools Niche
• 11:29 - Differentiating Products with a Lifetime Warranty
• 18:10 - Building a List through Lifetime Warranty Registration
• 21:03 - Incentivizing Lifetime Warranty Registration and Positive Reviews
• 26:57 - Streamlining Warranty Management

As always, if you have any questions or anything that you need help with, reach out to us at support@ecomcrew.com if you're interested. 

Don’t forget to leave us a review on iTunes if you enjoy our content. If you have any questions, send us an email at support@ecomcrew.com. We'd love to help you in any way we can. 

Thanks for listening!

Until next time, happy selling!

Mike reflects on the podcast as we hit our 500th milestone episode by exploring the profound power of time. In this special solo episode, Mike delves into the importance of time in various aspects of life, including investment, business, and personal growth. 

Welcome to this special milestone episode of the EcomCrew Podcast as we celebrate our 500th airing. Today, I’m putting on my philosophical hat to look back on the podcast and to guide you through my podcasting journey since the show started back in November 2015. 

In this solo episode, I delve into the profound power of time, which can be both a potent tool for positive change and a formidable obstacle. It can be short, or it can be longer than you think, but in the end, we’ll never know how long our time on Earth will be. However, it’s important to maximize the time we have as much as possible. It’s incredibly important never to rush, especially in investment, business, and personal growth. 

I'll share my own personal experiences with how it’s been the backbone of my stock and real estate investments, my businesses and content creation, showing the significance of long-term commitment and consistency. I'll also explore some of my favorite books that have shaped my thinking and business approach.

Timestamps:

• 00:00 - Introduction
• 00:33 - Postscript 
• 03:17 - Exploring the power and challenge of time.
• 05:20 - Importance of investing early and the magic of compounding interest.
• 07:10 - Experience on navigating competition in the e-commerce podcast realm.
• 09:13 - Persistence and consistency: Keys to long-term success.
• 14:10 - Sticking with one venture for long-term success
• 17:07 - Time as a finite resource: Why proper management is critical.
  
  

Drawing from my journey with the EcomCrew podcast, there were times where I wanted to quit but consistency was key. Success is never an overnight event, but a product of relentless efforts invested over time.

I can’t help but stress the importance of consistency, long-term dedication, and effective time management. It’s important for listeners to foster a long-term perspective in their business goals, steering clear of the “shiny thing” syndrome. 

Don’t forget to leave us a review over on iTunes if you enjoy content like this. 

Happy selling and we’ll talk to you soon!

Mike and longtime China-based seller Cameron talk about the reality of the pandemic situation in China and how ecommerce sellers can plan their trips back to the factory of the world this year.

Whether you’re only just starting out or are running an established ecommerce brand, there’s a good chance that your business is tied to China one way or another. I myself visit Hong Kong and China to attend trade shows, speak at seller conferences, and get some facetime with my factories every year—at least before the pandemic hit. 

Fast-forward a couple of years and ecommerce sellers are now itching to go back to China to optimize their supply chains and scale their businesses. That’s why in this episode, we’ll be talking all about the current COVID situation in Hong Kong and China and everything sellers need to know before visiting in 2023. 

Joining me for this episode is Cameron. He is a returning guest on the podcast and a longtime ecommerce seller who is currently based in China. If you’re planning a trip down south this year, you’ll definitely get a lot out of this episode.

Timestamps: 

• Cameron’s life in China – 2:03
• The reality of the COVID situation in China – 6:11
• How safe is it to travel to and from China today? – 20:13
• What the current protocols are for visiting China in 2023 – 23:45
• Are old business Visas to China still valid? – 28:27
• Which big trade shows will be returning this year? – 31:50
• The ideal time of year to visit China – 38:23
• Do you see foreigners in China right now? – 40:01

I wanna thank Cameron for taking the time to do this episode with me. I’m excited to have him back on the podcast down the road and hopefully talk about something other than the pandemic. 

As always, don’t forget to leave us a review on iTunes if you enjoyed this episode. Happy selling and I’ll see you on the next one!

EcomCrew Premium is open for a limited time

EcomCrew Premium is now accepting new members from January 28 - February 3.

We only open registrations a few times a year with the next reopening probably in April, so if you're ready to take your business to the next level, join us and get the following benefits:

• 1-on-1 unlimited email coaching
• Access to 4 full length courses (Importing from China, Launch an Amazon New Best Seller, Build a 7-Figure Product Brand, Facebook Messenger)
• Access to future courses
• Private monthly Q&A webinar
• Private Secret Sauce webinar where we bring in an ecommerce expert once a month
• Access to our exclusive members-only Facebook group

Click here to explore Premium.

With that out of the way, let's get down to what this episode is about.

2018 Recap: The Numbers

Dave and I first discussed the detail that seems to be the most important for most people: end of year revenue.

For us at Terran, we ended the year at $5,944,667. This is 27.22% higher than 2017, which was about $4.6 million.

We initially had a goal to earn $9.7 million dollars in revenue this year, but due to unforeseen circumstances we were forced to cut back product development which ultimately affected our revenue. I talked about this in more detail in this episode.

Dave's new company, which he started from scratch, ended the year at $556,000. His 2019 goal is to achieve a run rate of just under $2 million.

Money in the bank, Shanghai winters, and Amazon creating their own IceWraps brand

While last year was overshadowed by such things as additional tariffs and Amazon creating their own brand that's exactly like IceWraps, not everything was bleak in 2018.

We decided to prioritize profits over revenue last year, which led to us having substantial money on the bank for the first time since we started this business.

Our product launches have also been successful, largely due to the launch process we've been teaching at EcomCrew. This launch process was so successful that all of our newly launched products got the "New Best Seller" badge on Amazon.

Dave also ended the year with a third of his sales coming from Amazon Canada. Not only that, he's been successful directing traffic from Shopify to Amazon, effectively solidifying his ranking.

Dave had his fair share of lows though. One of these is a literal low (as in temperature) when he went to Shanghai during its worst winter in 20 years, without a jacket.

That said, one of our highest highs last year was the success of EcomCrew Premium.

Years ago, EcomCrew was nothing more than just a blog and podcast revolving around a hobby. Last year marked EcomCrew becoming a real and profitable business, and we have you to thank.

Thanks for listening to this episode! Until the next one, happy selling.

“Even when you find business models that are pretty well fleshed-out, there’s gonna be a million ways to connect the dots that you just kind of have to take your best swings and learn as hard as you can and work as hard as you can. That’s going to be everybody’s experience in entrepreneurship. There’s really no way around that.” - Dan Faggella

Our guest for today's episode is a Class A badass guy. Those who have been listening to the podcast for a while now know that I vet every single guest to make sure that they don't pitch a product or service that's not useful to our listeners. Hence I have a rule to never interview anyone I haven't met personally.

This guy just broke that rule.

Our guest, Dan Faggella, is an awesome, I-wish-I-had-more-time-to-talk-to-him impressive guy. I've been in ecommerce for over 15 years and it's hard to impress me with anything these days. But Dan just blew me away. I talked to him for about 40 minutes and had me thinking about implementing his ideas on my business after the interview.

Dan Faggella is the founder of Tech Emergence, a company focusing on artificial intelligence. But before he founded Tech Emergence, he built and ran Science of Skill, an eLearning ecommerce company geared towards self-defense. What started as a way to fund his dream of building an AI company became a multi-million dollar venture, achieved by selling digital products.

In this episode Dan and I talk about his early days in ecommerce, how he came about the idea of creating Science of Skill, tips on selling digital products, and tons more tips on ecommerce and entrepreneurship in general.

As a sneak peek, here are some conversation points:

• How Dan and I virtually met
• Why and how he started Science of Skill
• How he found ecommerce as a way to fund his lifelong dream of creating an AI company
• The two approaches to selling digital products
• Leveraging digital products to increase margin on physical products
• Why he doesn't sell on Amazon
• Where he finds his customers and his sales channels
• Tips on selling digital products
• How he finds experts for his instructional videos
• His badass Jiu Jitsu skills and how he can beat guys twice his size (link to video below)

This is an unusually long episode and I apologize for that. I just loved talking to Dan and wish I could have more time with him. It was such an insightful and information-packed conversation and I hope you find it extremely useful as well!

Resources mentioned:

MyEcomCrew
Epic video of Dan beating big guys
Coloring Club

If you want to know more about Dan or reach out to him, you can go to his website, or shoot him an email at dan@techemergence.com. You can also find him on Twitter (@danfaggella).

Thanks for listening, as always. Until next week, happy selling!

Marketing is part and parcel of doing ecommerce, and it’s becoming more and more difficult to make your products stand out from the competition as the marketplace becomes more saturated. 

For this episode, we’ll be talking about some pain points shared by many ecommerce sellers on the marketing front and provide some actionable tips to address them. 

Joining me is Emma Schermer Tamir of Marketing by Emma, a company that helps clients boost conversions through engaging content and other creative marketing solutions. She is a copywriter by trade and she has over a decade of experience in marketing and customer psychology.

Whether you’re just starting out or are already an established seller, this episode will show you that there’s always something you can tweak to make your product pop out even more—and that even tiny, unrelated details can have a meaningful impact. 

Timestamps:

• Pros and cons of focusing on keyword optimization - 4:58
• Using language that convey what your product is all about - 8:08
• Crafting kickass photos to showcase your product - 17:49
• Why you should build out your dream customer avatar - 23:40
• Understanding the competition and how to contrast yourself from them - 27:08
• Speaking in terms of benefits, not features - 33:53

Even mentioned: Rhodium Weekend

I wanna thank Emma for coming on the show and sharing her marketing expertise with us. I’m sure you found as much value in it as I did. If you’re interested to learn more about her company, head over to marketingbyemma.com.

By the way, something else you don’t want to miss is our upcoming free public webinar about selling your business for top dollar, where we’ll be breaking down the entire process of exiting an ecommerce business—from nailing down an exit strategy to post-deal terms. Head over to ecomcrew.com/webinar for details. 

As always, leave us a review over on iTunes if you enjoyed this episode. It helps more than you know.

Happy selling!

Amazon is the 800-pound gorilla in ecommerce and when they announce something new, it's bound to make the waves. But just in case Amazon news missed your inbox, Dave and I are here to recap them for you.

This will be a recurring episode in the podcast with Dave and I regularly updating you with big and exciting announcements from Amazon. This series is going to be chock-full of value even if you're not selling on Amazon, as it seems that almost everything Amazon does tends to affect all of ecommerce.

In this episode Dave and I talk about the following updates:

• 2018 Boost with FBA event on June 20th in New Orleans
• Inventory Performance Index and how to optimize your inventory
• Amazon App Store
• Amazon remarketing data
• Amazon media group
• New Amazon video ads

In conjunction with Amazon updates, we're also excited to announce new stuff from EcomCrew.

As part of our commitment to add new content every month, we will be releasing a course on Facebook Messenger in July. Sign up for an EcomCrew Premium membership to get access to this when it launches, plus access to ALL of our content--all of our courses, talks, webinars, spreadsheets, contacts, etc.

If you're not sure about joining us yet but you need help with your business, just go to AMA (Ask Me Anything), ask us whatever question you have and I (or Dave) will answer your question and give you advice for free.

Resources mentioned:

Ask Me Anything
EcomCrew Premium
What is Amazon’s Inventory Performance Index & How Is It Calculated?

Thanks for listening to this episode! If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!

Welcome to the 316th episode of the Ecomcrew Podcast! Isn't it crazy how half the year has already gone by? Not to mention that we've been in quarantine for almost a quarter now, but things are starting to open up, so that must mean some good is finally going to come around.

Since half the year has passed, I felt like it was a great time to go over some interesting data that was released by my friends over at JungleScout. They recently released some data about who the Amazon Seller is, how their Amazon businesses are doing and their concerns and challenges for the future.

If you're interested in reading the full report, you can find it here. 

Today's episode is definitely an interesting read for every seller out there, and I definitely think that there's some changes that you should make after listening through this episode. If you have no idea if your Amazon business is profitable or not, I suggest that now is the time to take control and really dive into the inner workings of your business. 

Register now for our FREE Public Webinar on June 4th, 2020!

Dave and I will be talking about Redirecting External Traffic for Amazon Sellers. You'll learn about why external traffic can make or break your product launches, how to drive external traffic to your Amazon listings and how to increase your chances of getting your product to #1 and keeping it there. 

Thanks for listening to this episode! 

Until the next one, 
Happy Selling and stay safe out there. 

Welcome to Episode 344 of the EcomCrew podcast! Dave and I are back with our usual banters and some sweet tactics for you to try out to improve your revenue on Amazon.

One of the wisest things you can do as an entrepreneur is to take note of the things that worked for other sellers and try implementing them into your own business.

In this episode, Dave and I talk about 7 Amazon hacks we’ve used for our own listings, how they work, and how they can benefit you.

Timestamps:

• Hack #1: Strive to get an Amazon badge - 5:40
• Hack #2: Use Brand Analytics to Your Advantage - 8:50
• Hack #3: Add questions to your listings - 12:58
• Hack #4: Be vigilant about your products’ measurements - 15:38
• Hack #5: Use a refunds manager - 18:40
• Hack #6: Use an IP accelerator - 21:30
• Hack #7: Add foreign keywords in your back end - 24:27

If you want more advanced Amazon hacks, you can read the blog post written by our content writer Christine. It contains detailed steps to how you can improve traffic to your listing, save on fees, and more.

And to ensure your success in Amazon, you can get our book, Amazon Domination, for free! Dave and I wrote this book to help our fellow entrepreneurs navigate Amazon better and to help them avoid the common pitfalls third-party sellers make.

All you’re going to pay for is the shipping fee, and we’ll send you a free copy of the book.

What did you think of this episode? Do you want us to continue our friendly banters? Leave a comment below or write a short review over on iTunes.

Until next time, happy selling!

John Li and Mike talk about the newest trends that PickFu has observed over hundreds of thousands of AB Tests done on their platform.

PickFu is a customer insights platform that acts as a digital focus group for ecommerce sellers who want to run tests, say A/B testing a product image, and get customer feedback on product listings. 

My guest for this episode is John Li, who is a Co-Founder of PickFu and knows the ins and outs of customer research. 

I’ll be picking his brain about the key insights that he’s gotten from the thousands of tests that sellers have run using PickFu, including the testing strategies that big ecommerce rollups use to optimize their listings. 

Throughout the episode, he’ll be showing me specific examples of optimized listings and we’ll be breaking down which elements have the most impact on sales and conversions. If you’re tuning in through an audio-only channel, be sure to check out this episode over on the EcomCrew YouTube Channel and our new dedicated EcomCrew Podcast Channel for clips and episode highlights.

Timestamps:  

• Introduction - 01:00
• John’s insights on how sellers have done testing over the years - 02:50
• Actual examples of optimized listings - 07:25 
• Why you should test early - 21:17
• The different responses you get for running consumer insights tests - 26:15
• Using open-ended ways to get feedback - 29:37

I want to thank John for the strategies and actionable stuff he shared in this episode. We’ll definitely have him back for more insights as the market develops. If you want to learn more about customer research or run your first test using PickFu, head over to their website and use discount code: ecomcrew to get 50% off your first poll.

By the way, if you’re selling on Amazon out of Canada, we’re currently running a giveaway exclusively for you. By answering our quick poll over on ecomcrew.com/poll2021 you can get a chance to win a full year’s worth of EcomCrew Premium membership, which is valued at $1499, absolutely free! 

If you haven’t already, please leave us a review over on iTunes. It helps more than you know. Happy selling and we’ll talk to you soon!

Hi, Dave here. The spread of the 2019 Novel-coronavirus (2019-nCov) has been sowing fear and panic in people throughout the world for weeks now. The latest statistics from the WHO have recorded 14,557 cases of the disease, with an overwhelming 14,411 originating from China.

The Chinese government enforced lockdown on the city of Wuhan, the outbreak’s epicenter, and also in other cities in the Hubei province, including Xiangyang where ecommerce entrepreneur Cameron Walker is quarantined with this family.

In this episode, we get a firsthand account of what daily life is like in a city forced into isolation, as the rest of China frantically works to contain the virus. Cameron also talks about the potential impact the Coronavirus outbreak can potentially have on ecommerce sellers importing their goods from Chinese manufacturers.

"So how do you win if you're doing what everyone else is doing? If we're all using Best Selling Rank or BSR, then everyone is always going to sell the same products and we're just flooding the market with all the same products. So we try to go where the puck is going and not where the puck is." - Chad Rubin of Skubana

In our second 3 digit episode we have Chad Rubin of Skubana as our guest. "Chad Rubin of Skubana" is how I refer to him  but he is so much more than that. He co-founded Skubana, a multi-channel inventory management software that we have been using for over a year now. He is a 7-figure seller who also runs the Accelerate Workshop, an exclusive one-day workshop for high-volume multi-channel ecommerce sellers. 

Like Kevin Stecko of 80sTees.com, Chad is one of those we jokingly call the "grandfathers of ecommerce" because he has been in ecommerce for a very long time. At the time there was an absence of good ecommerce tools, so to satisfy his own ecommerce needs, he created his own internal tools and shared them with the world, one of which is Skubana.

In this episode we talk about a topic that is of crucial importance especially for those just venturing in ecommerce--how do you find profitable products to sell in a market that is already saturated?

Many sellers do their research: they look at BSR and probably fire up Jungle Scout to judge profitability, and that could work, but people who do that usually end up selling "me-too products". That saturates the market even more and buries their products beneath thousands of similar others.

Chad has a solution. He doesn't want to do what everybody else is doing; he instead focuses on what people are actually looking for but which Amazon does not have yet. He explains how he does this in detail and provides some examples in our conversation.

We also covered other topics, including:

• How to prevent being copied on Amazon
• How he had his business audited, not for selling purposes, but to increase profitability
• The systems he put in place to run his business efficiently with just one employee
• Lifetime value of a customer
• Amazon's A9 algorithm and ways to rank higher
• The importance of conversion rate
• The Accelerate workshop

This is a fully packed episode with actionable advice and lots of resources and software recommendations. We've compiled the links below so you can easily check them out.

Resources mentioned:

AsiaInspection
Stamped.io
EcomCrew Podcast Episode 35: Chad Rubin on the Development of Skubana
Crucial Vacuum
Think Crucial
Accelerate Workshop

Shopify apps he is using:

Bold Brain
Bold Tiered Pricing
Bold Upsell

Webinar:

International Selling Secrets Direct From Amazon For Maximum ROI on International Marketplaces

That's episode 101 guys! We hope you find Chad's valuable actionable advice useful in your own business. If you do and you enjoyed this episode, we'd really love it if you'd leave us an honest review on iTunes. That will help us in our rankings and discoverability so we can reach more ecommerce entrepreneurs out there.

As always, thanks for listening. Until the next episode, happy selling!

Hello and welcome to E334 of the EcomCrew podcast!

Today, I am joined by Judson Morgan, who is an actor, entrepreneur, and more importantly, the founder of Butter, a video ad agency that helps ecommerce businesses tell their brand and product stories through high-quality videos.

In this episode, Judson and I talk about

• What a video is worth - 4:18 
• How other platforms adapted to the rise of video marketing - 5:50
• How Judson started with Butter - 7:15
• The challenges of making video content - 9:43
• How much videos increase conversion rate - 11:37
• How to make good video content with little budget - 13:33
• The importance of brand storytelling - 18:00
• Butter’s case studies - 20:34
• Versatility of videos - 23:24
• Using keyword strategy along with video content - 25:33
• Mike’s strategy when using video content - 28:27
• Where you can find Judson - 30:34
• Mike spending time with his employees in the Philippines - 32:00

You can find Judson and check out his company’s work over at butter.la. 

And if you haven’t signed up yet, we are closing our EcomCrew Premium registration tonight at 11:59 p.m. and wouldn’t be opening again until next quarter. 

Sign up now to get one-on-one support from Dave and I as well as access to our exclusive Facebook group, monthly webinars, and Premium courses.

Finally, if you like this episode, please leave us a review over at iTunes.

Until the next episode! Happy selling!

Welcome to Episode 354 of the EcomCrew podcast!

It seems like it wasn’t too long ago when we started recording the first one, but here we are, closing 2020 out with the 354th episode.

Throughout the year, we’ve talked to lots of interesting people in the industry and learned a bunch of new stuff both from their expertise and their mistakes.

To cap it all off, we’ve thrown together a list of the best episodes of 2020. It includes 7 of our most downloaded episodes plus a few other favorites handpicked by our staff.

What did you think about E350 and Greg Elfrink’s story of the Uber for grilled cheese sandwiches? Did the tidbits we found out in the Amazon vs. Congress Hearing in E299 raise your eyebrows? How about that crazy ‘package stabber’ story from our good friend Merideth in E339?

Timestamps

• How we made our picks - 3:20
• Top10: E301: Why Perseverance is so Important in Ecommerce with Dave Alexander - 3:54
• Top 9. E315: Getting Your First Product into People's Hands - 5:16
• Top 8. E298: Running an Ecommerce Business Out of Chiang Mai, Thailand - 6:15
• Top 7. E307: Breaking the Patterns in Copywriting with Lianna Patch - 7:52
• Top 6. E316: The State of the Amazon Seller with Joe from JungleScout - 9:20
• Top 5. E299: Top 10 Things We Learned in the Amazon vs. Congress Hearing - 10:39
• Top 4. E350: 7 Highly Interesting Businesses and What You Can Learn From Them with Greg Elfrink - 13:09
• Top 3. E339: Crazy Customer Tales with Meredith Erin - 14:39
• Top 2. Bonus Ep: The Struggles of an Ecommerce Seller in China Right Now - 16:45
• Top 1. E303: A Pen, a Paper and a Dream with Roye Okupe - 19:09
• How 2020 has been for us - 20:50

We’re throwing together a list of the best Amazon seller software of 2020. Simply tell us which apps you find most helpful and get a chance to win an annual Premium membership worth $1999 absolutely free. For Premium members, we’ll be extending your membership for a full year if you win.

All you need to do is answer four short questions.

Did your favorite episode make it on our list? Let us know and don’t forget to leave a review over on iTunes.

Happy holidays and, as always, happy selling!

This episode is part one of what will be a two or three part series on brand building.  You hear a lot about selling your products to make thousands on Amazon, but the way that we look at it is that those things are just get-rich-quick schemes. You’re not building a long term presence or brand, which is what we’re here to talk about today: how to build your brand. 

Personally, we have our own brands that have all individually reached success. We discuss the strategy we’re using of researching a market in depth and looking at other products in the same niche that are similar to what we want to do that we can do better. We see their rankings and figure out how to improve the product and build a brand around those improvements.

We’re here to talk to you about how to do that, and so much more like:

• How we used Amazon as a strong sales channel to bootstrap their brand
• Things that you need to be looking for when you're starting your own brand
• The pros and cons of owning your own brand
• The truth about being a seller on Amazon
• Cash-flow and higher margins
• Our newly newly-launched business
• The dangers to avoid when starting up your brand

Before you really commit to your brand, be sure to test it out first. It comes down to reducing the damage of your bad decisions and asking yourself: “Are we still gonna sell enough every day to make it worth our while?”

It’s really necessary to get the confidence under your feet to be able to pull the trigger on  larger purchases, as well. Having an idea of how much money you can put into your brand for most people will be the predominant factor in deciding what kind of brand you can even launch. If you’re just trying to get an idea of the market, we tell you about a quick test you can do with $500 or less.

If you have any questions or anything you’d like us to discuss on the podcast please go to ecomcrew.com and fill out the contact form. Also we would really appreciate if you would leave us a review on iTunes.   

Dave goes through the top third-party sellers on Amazon, what products they sell, how much they make in revenue annually, and what their business models are.

At the start of the year, we began working behind the scenes on producing regular reports on top third-party sellers on Amazon.

Since Amazon doesn’t release reports on third-party sellers, we had to develop a way to harness this data ourselves. 

After months of research, we’ve managed to come up with a methodology that produces more or less accurate results.

Analyzing the sellers’ profiles, you see how vastly different their business models are. Some on this list are straight resellers, others are private label brands.

The product categories run the gamut too, from beddings and houseware to pharmaceuticals and electronics.

As we continue this series, we look forward to featuring new third-party sellers on the list and gain some insight into their business models.

That wraps up this episode of the podcast. Don’t forget to leave us a review over on iTunes if you enjoy our content. Happy selling and we’ll see you in the next one!

Join EcomCrew Premium

In other (exciting) news, registration for EcomCrew Premium will be open starting May 17 midnight! Join the Premium ‘Crew and get access to cool perks such as exclusive webinars and unlimited email support from Mike and I.

Registration will be open for only a week and slots are limited so make sure to sign up as soon as you can! For more information about EcomCrew Premium, visit www.ecomcrew.com/premium.

Mina Elias joins the Ecomcrew Podcast to drop some value bombs -- from optimizing your click-through rate to experimenting with price increases, this is one you won't want to miss. 

Today we're joined by friend and fellow speaker, Mina Elias of Trivium Group. 

Mina and I met doing the usual speaking rounds at several events and I've always felt like Mina knew how to walk the walk. 

Mina is back on the podcast to drop some Value Bombs. From deconstructing the Amazon Funnel, to finding profit leaks in your business, Mina's advice is definitely not one to miss. 

Timestamps: 

• 0:00 - Introduction 
• 1:30 - Background on Mina Elias 
• 4:46 - Value Bomb #1 - Breaking Down the Amazon Funnel 
• 7:00 - Squeezing out Click-Through Rate 
• 12:37 - Meetup at Hong Kong 
• 13:40 - Value Bomb #2 - Raising Conversion Rates
• 15:09 - Optimizing Your Main Image to Increase Click-Through Rate
• 18:00 - Sneak Peek Into Next Week's Episode - Profasee with Chad Rubin 
• 24:50 - Finding Missed Opportunities 
• 28:18 - "How Do You Find Out What To Change First?" 
• 35:20 - Mike's Experience with Tinkering with Prices 

If you're interested in partnering with Mina for your business, I highly recommend you do so by checking out this link. If you want to hear more of Mina's value bombs, follow him on his LinkedIn or Instagram pages. 

As always, if you have any questions or anything that you need help with, reach out to us at support@ecomcrew.com if you're interested. 

Don’t forget to leave us a review on iTunes if you enjoy our content. If you have any questions, send us an email at support@ecomcrew.com. We'd love to help you in any way we can. 

Thanks for listening!

Until next time, happy selling! 

Today’s guest is George Lawrence, the founder of MerchantWords. I’ve been wanting to get him on the podcast for ages. Finally, we’ve had the chance to record this episode. 

Before getting into the meat and bones of what his awesome tool does, a bit of storytime.

George is known in and around the industry as one of the good guys. Not just for his generosity in sharing what he knows but also for his resilience in the face of setbacks. Last year, his house burned down in one of the fires that ravaged parts of Southern California.

Fortunately, personal and business experience instilled a sense of preparedness in him. With things up on the cloud and having a distributed workforce, he was able to forge on with his company.

Now on to MerchantWords. If you ever wanted to get in-depth insights on what people are searching for in your niche, it’s definitely a must-try.

Here’s George giving the 411 on this awesome tool.

• how  Merchant Words started (9:50)
• what MerchantWords does (16:40) 
• how it's beneficial to sellers  (18:25)
• some real-world examples (23:15)

Sign up for MerchantWords using our link and get $21 off on a monthly plan. 

Speaking of great tools, we recently did a series of webinars with Helium 10, which we turned into a mini-course.

Even if you don’t use Helium 10, I think you’ll find the information there that's really interesting. Head over to ecomcrew.com/helium to watch the entire series.

Finally, if you enjoyed listening and think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!

Ecommerce sellers often throw money on Facebook and Google ads for most of their revenue. But there’s actually a way to use those ads to... well, never rely on ads again (or at least cut your ad costs significantly). 

In this episode, I’ll be talking to Jordan West, who is the founder and CEO of Mindful Marketing and who also runs the awesome Secrets to Scaling Your Ecommerce Brand Podcast.

Jordan will be sharing how he made over $250K in ecommerce sales in 24 hours without relying on Facebook ads or heavy discounts, and what strategies he used.

We’ll be talking about building a VIP group of loyal customers by offering them exclusive products, early access to new products, and even nurturing a community where VIPs can exchange opinions about your brand.

We also go over the benefits of gated product launches and SMS marketing, which could work in ways that you don’t really expect. 

Timestamps: 

• An introduction to who Jordan West is and how he got into entrepreneurship and ecommerce - 02:18 
• Gated launches and why building anticipation can boost conversions - 13:13
• Building a VIP group and getting that first thousand people on your list - 18:54
• SMS marketing and which tools Jordan uses for his customer base - 21:56

Tools mentioned: 

• Postscript
• Attentive

I had fun hearing about Jordan’s experiences and strategies. Be sure to check out Mindful Marketing and his podcast to learn more about ads management and other things ecommerce. 

We talked about product launches in this episode, but did you know that 10 minutes is all it takes to successfully launch your rockstar product? This coming June 16 at 10 AM (PST), Founder and CEO of Million Dollar Sellers, Ian Sells will be going live with a free public webinar on Simple and Automated Product Launches in 2021.

It’s free, and there’s still a lot of slots up for grabs! Save your spot here.

As always, if you liked this episode, head over to iTunes and leave us a review. It helps more than you know.

Until the next one, happy selling!

Time flies so fast and before you know it, another year gone!

As 2018 comes to an end, we decided to look back into the year and round up our 10 most downloaded podcast episodes:

10. E169: Building Your Facebook Audience with Dave Huss
9. E158: Using Amazon PPC and Giveaways to Create an Effective Launch Strategy
8. E198: The First Steps in Ecommerce Marketing (Under the Hood with Colin Grice)
7. E159: 3 Key Email Marketing Sequences for Your Ecommerce Business
6. E205: Advanced Amazon PPC Strategies with Dave Bryant
5. E155: Where to Start with Building a Product Brand - Under the Hood with Richard Phillips
4. E206: A Rundown of the Best Amazon Tools
3. E147: Amazon PPC Strategy - Step-by-Step Guide on Saving Thousands of Dollars
2. E129: How to Pick the Perfect Product to Sell in eCommerce
1. E167: Overcoming Serious Beginner Mistakes - Under the Hood with James Treloar

Let us know what you think, and if you have topics you'd like us to discuss on the podcast, feel free to leave a comment below.

Thanks for being with us this past year, and may we all have an amazing 2019!

Welcome to the Ecomcrew podcast and hello from Melbourne, Australia! We're at the last stop for our holiday trip but I recorded a bunch of podcasts while we were still in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, and we've been saving today's episode for the big 300 milestone. 

So in today's episode of the Ecomcrew podcast, I get to speak with a very special guest. He's one of my best friends, but we're not going to reveal who just yet to avoid spoilers for the audience. But our secret guest has been a very important person to Ecomcrew, and if you're one of the listeners that have been with us from the very beginning, you might know who I'm talking about. 

We go over various topics like why he decided to start selling on Amazon full-time all those years ago, how running multiple businesses does not mean you're a great multitasker, and how we've changed and grown over so many years. 

Mike and Dave discuss the strategies that Mike's put in place to squeeze as much profitability as possible to gain maximum value out of his business when he goes to sale. 

Back in July, I announced on the podcast recently where my headspace has been at and the events that lead to the possible reasons why. 

At the start of August, the wheels were set in motion and I ended up selling 2 more ecommerce brands.

Dave and I ended on a cliffhanger on that episode, and this is the official Part 2 where Dave and I talk about what I've been up to and how I've been squeezing out as much profitability as possible before selling – from Avoiding Amazon's HUGE Inventory Costs, to using Freelancers to make up for manpower and more, you won't want to miss this one.   

Here's a few chapter markers that you can easily refer to: 

Audio Timestamps: 

• Introduction – 0:00 
• A Quick Recap – 1:13
• Creating New Reports to Make Things Efficient – 2:43
• How Dave Automates Forecast Reports – 7:45
• How Mike Avoids Amazon's New Storage Costs – 10:06
• How Dave Deals With Inventory – 18:13
• Shifting to One Employee: What Roles Are Essential? – 25:11
• Essential Roles Dave Hires For – 29:05
• The Real Costs of Employees – 32:55
• A Short Discussion About PPC – 36:14
• Pricing and Coupons – 37:08 
• Hidden Gem: Bulk Packs – 41:38
• The Challenge of Accurate Bookkeeping – 43:31 
• The Last Tip: 2% Cashback Rewards – 50:22

Stay tuned as we continue to update on our future plans, and for our special PPC episode we're planning for!

I hope you took away some valuable profit-saving insights from this episode. Don’t forget to leave us a review on iTunes if you enjoy our content. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to support@ecomcrew.com.

Happy selling and I’ll see you on the next one!

The desire to be successful is a commonality that all ecommerce entrepreneurs share. However, people’s definition of success varies. 

Personally, I don’t define success as amassing more money. But money is a way to keep score. I’m a competitive person with an ‘all in’ approach to business. It’s this potent combination that has led me to suffer recurring episodes of burnout.

Steve Chou of My Wife Quit Her Job is a good friend of mine and while discussing the effects of burnout, he introduced me to the 4 Burners Theory.

The 4 burners represent the four life quadrants - work, health, family, and friends. If you want to run a successful business you have to turn off one of these four burners. In order to run a REALLY successful business, you have to turn two off. 

In this episode, I relate this theory with my own personal experience and which “burners” I had unknowingly turned off to be able to grow my business to the scale it is today.

Today's episode is brought to you by Brex. Brex is a corporate credit card built specifically with the needs of ecommerce business in mind. Net 60 float, with no personal guarantee. Your card limit's based on your monthly sales, not your credit score. Sign up today and use the code ecomcrew to get 50,000 signup bonus points. Available to listeners in the USA only.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review on iTunes. And use the comment section on the bottom of the page to ask us a question. 

Till next time, happy selling!

Welcome to the first ever episode of the E-Commerce Crew Podcast! Since this is the first episode, introductions are in order:

We are your hosts, Grant Yuan and Mike Jackness. Both of us have been involved with business for most of our professional lives, and we have a similar background in online marketing and the affiliate industry. Grant started working with affiliates in 2003, focusing on online gaming and a lot of poker sites. Mike is a lifelong entrepreneur who started running his own businesses at 18 with nothing but a pack of business cards and a pager. He worked with online marketing for many years before he turned himself on to buying and selling host names for websites, and that’s how he got involved with buying, owning, and selling his own e-commerce businesses.

Our podcast is our opportunity to share all we’ve learned with the rest of you out there struggling and succeed to run your own e-commerce businesses. Each episode will focus on the tips we’ve learned, the ones that didn’t work so well, the progression we’ve made over the years, and where we think we’re going to be heading into the future. There will be guests on air to share their insights, and we will be covering a range of topics, including:

• Where trends are going and how you can stay on top of them
• How to buy smart with keystone pricing
• How to negotiate shipping prices for your specific business focus (pro tip: the best items to ship are socks)
• Pros and cons of paying cash or credit for your wholesale supply
• How to avoid leaving money on the table

Over the next few weeks, this podcast will evolve to become one of the most important tools you use to become and stay successful at running your online business.

Stay tuned for episodes on buying and selling online businesses and domains, selling your products on Amazon, building your brand, and how to prepare your own exit strategy so you can continue to expand your interests and develop new businesses.

Leave us a review iTunes and head over to our site www.ecomcrew.com for more news and updates on what’s working for e-commerce today.

Liz Saunders and I talk about Amazon's Influencer Program; how it can be beneficial for sellers, how sellers can reach out to more sellers, and why you should apply for Amazon Inspire if you've got the audience for it. 

Want to start a new side hustle? Check out Fluencer Fruit now! 

As an Amazon seller, getting traffic to your listing is always a high-value priority.  One way to do this is through influencer marketing, where you pay influencers to promote and direct their audience to your storefront. 

Is this what the Amazon Influencer program helps with? What's the difference between this and the Amazon Associates program? We tackle all that today with our guest, Liz Saunders. 

Liz Saunders is a first-time guest on the podcast, and an Amazon Seller since 2016. She spoke this year at Steve Chou's Seller Summit for the first time, and her topic on the program amazed me so much that I had to invite her on today's podcast to discuss more about it.  

Audio Timestamps: 

• 0:00 - Introduction 
• 2:11 - Liz Saunders' background 
• 3:38 - What is the Amazon Influencer Program? 
• 10:58 - Case Study on the Impact of Influencer Content 
• 13:27 - Statistics on Copy vs Video, UGC vs brand content
• 14:12 - How to get more influencers to work with you 
• 19:52 - Early Results on the Case Study 
• 21:48 - "Do you own the content that Influencers make?" 
• 22:17 - Amazon Inspire
• 28:15 - Helping Influencers Make Money 
• 34:12 - Reach out to Liz Saunders
• 34:52 - The requirements to join the Amazon Influencer Program 

I hope you took away some valuable insights from this episode. If you’re interested in Fluencer Fruit, get the Chrome Extension with code ECOMCREW and get 50% off for life.  

Don’t forget to leave us a review on iTunes if you enjoy our content. If you have any questions, send us an email at support@ecomcrew.com. We'd love to help you in any way we can. 

Thanks for listening!

Until next time, happy selling! 

One of the toughest niches to be in right now is the travel niche. Because of COVID-19, airline companies and ecommerce sellers have seen a huge drop in sales now that everything's closed. If you were in the travelling niche right now, what would you do to maximize your business potential? 

That'll be the question that we're answering on this episode of the Ecomcrew podcast. We're joined by my dear friend Salo Mizrachi from Ezpacking to talk about how COVID-19 has affected his brand, affiliate sites, and whether it'd be wise to dive into a new, different niche. Together, we'll be weighing the pros and cons of each choice while also considering Salo's end goal for his business, and how much time he's willing to put into his business. 

In this episode, we talk about: 

• Branching off from the travelling niche.
• Starting an affiliate website for Salo's current niche. 
• The Importance of Location Independence to Salo and his wife. 
• The New Normal for Salo after COVID-19.
• Having an Emergency Income Source in times like these. 
• Why Amazon slashed Affiliate Commissions.
• The Advantages of the Subscription Plan Model. 

If you want to hear more about where I think we'll be after COVID-19, check out the episode I did with Andrew Youderian and Drew Sanocki here.

If you wanna check out our Free Amazon Domination book, check it out here! 

Stay safe, and happy selling! 

Imagine having finally decided to take the plunge and sell on Amazon. You've figured out what to sell, you've placed your first order from a Chinese manufacturer, you've set up your listing.

Your product arrives in FBA warehouses and just when you're ready to get your first sale, you notice that there are tons of other sellers on Amazon selling the exact same thing, and all for lower prices.

You wait days and weeks but sales are barely coming in. Now you start to worry about your inventory sitting in warehouses eating money, and will continue doing so, unless you sell more...

...or pull your inventory off Amazon and liquidate.

That is not a pretty picture.

This problem can happen to anyone, especially to those selling for the first time and diving head first without much knowledge on how this all works.

But while being put in this situation truly sucks, there are still some things that can be done to turn the situation around.

This is what James and I talk about in this Under the Hood episode.

Some conversation points:

• How he got started in ecommerce
• The fatal mistakes that created a whole mess of problems
• The inventory paradox
• Avoiding "me too" products and differentiating for defensibility
• The importance of product photography and Enhanced Brand Content
• The proper way to validate and launch products
• Why you should always align your interests with that of Amazon's

If you'd like to be featured on your own Under the Hood episode and get free business advice from me, just sign up here.

Resources mentioned:

Under the Hood
EcomCrew Premium
E148: How Digital Products Can Bolster Your Ecommerce Business

Our EcomCrew family is growing year after year, and we’ve been welcoming new members since we first launched. However, despite the unique individuals who join the community, we’ve been noticing some questions that are constantly recurring be it in our exclusive Facebook group, in the emails, or during our monthly webinars.

So Dave and I decided to pool together the top 5 questions that our Premium members are asking and answer them on this podcast. You might be having the same queries yourself, so this is a great episode for you to finally get the answers!

Timestamps:

• The silver lining of the pandemic for me - 4:50
• Question 1: Should your blog content be on a standalone domain or should you have it on your e-commerce website? - 9:25
• The advantages of having a standalone blog - 10:51
• Question 2: When should you group your products together? - 13:37
• How eliminating some of my products helped my conversion rates - 15:52
• The effect of launching a variation of a successful product - 20:20
• Question 3: When should you open a second Amazon account? - 21:40
• The advantages and disadvantages of making a separate Amazon account for different brands - 24:10
• Question 4: What type of URLs do you use when sending traffic to Amazon? - 29:48
• Question 5: When should you stop optimizing your Amazon listings and work on another product? - 36:20
• What I did when our competitors started copying our listings - 39:00
• Our plans for EcomCrew in 2021 - 42:20

Aside from these five questions, a lot more are being answered within our EcomCrew Premium community.

If you want to be a part of the team for free and join us on our exclusive webinars, you can tell us what your favorite Amazon software is so you can get the chance to win an EcomCrew annual subscription! If you’re already a member, we’ll extend your membership for another year.

All you need to do is answer four quick questions, and you can be the lucky winner.

We hope you enjoyed this episode, and if you did, don’t forget to leave us a review on iTunes. It helps this podcast a lot, and we’d really appreciate it if you do.

Until the next episode!

Happy selling!

Adam Craft, founder of Elevated Craft, joins Mike Jackness on the EcomCrew podcast to discuss his personal journey in building a brand.

Adam shares his approach to product differentiation in a saturated market, and how building a strong brand was the first priority for Adam. This meant that learning the basics of Amazon wasn't his priority. It was all in the hands of agencies. 

Eventually, Adam learned about the challenges of relying on agencies and how much better it would be to learn and implement marketing strategies yourself. Adam also shares his experience with using Kickstarter, and how his upbringing impacted his business mindset. 

Mike discusses some hard hitting points of e-commerce with long-time friend John Canetta, including whether e-commerce will ever get easier, the hidden stresses of running an ecommerce business, and how John was able to recover from losing 80% of his business during quarantine. 

With a new year coming around, it looks like the ecommerce landscape only gets more and more difficult. Amazon introduces more changes to storage fees, the number of competitors increase day by day, along with all the other stresses of a growing e-commerce business. In fact, the last time I've experienced an "easy" ecommerce year was back in 2019. 

That's why I've invited John over to the podcast to discuss today's topic. John is a 7-figure business owner, with almost as much (if not more) years in experience selling on Amazon and Google than I do.  

Here's some timestamps to help you skip to your favorite parts:

• 0:00 - Introduction
• 0:30 - Ad Spot
• 2:46 - Podcast Starts 
• 4:49 - Background on John
• 6:22 - The Hidden Stresses of an E-Commerce Business
• 9:15 - Difficulty of E-commerce
• 11:43 - Why Cash is King
• 13:10 - Ecommerce Struggles 
• 14:36 - Evaluating the Financial Model 
• 16:09 - The EOS Model 
• 17:33 - Tracking Return on Working Capital 
• 19:04 - 1 SKU Brand vs 100 SKU Brand 
• 22:51 - Machinery Manufacturing Issues 

As always, if you have any questions or anything that you need help with, reach out to us at support@ecomcrew.com if you're interested. 

Don’t forget to leave us a review on iTunes if you enjoy our content. If you have any questions, send us an email at support@ecomcrew.com. We'd love to help you in any way we can. 

Until next time, happy selling!

Happy new year, and welcome to the first episode of the EcomCrew podcast for 2021!

Last year was crazy for everyone, and the pandemic definitely brought about a lot of changes to the way we live, work, and consume. Many businesses experienced losses, but a lot of e-commerce sellers benefited from the fact that people can’t easily go out to buy what they want and need.

For this episode, my good friend Steve Chou of mywifequitherjob.com joins me as we take a look back at 2020 and talk about what we think is going to happen in 2021 in terms of our businesses and e-commerce in general.

We analyze some factors that affect our traffic and give you some tips that worked for us.

Timestamps:

• How we did in terms of sales during the holidays - 4:50
• Focusing on Amazon traffic vs. traffic to your own site - 6:38
• What to consider before choosing your niche - 8:52
• Steve’s promotion technique - 11:20
• Focusing on Amazon vs. lifecycle marketing - 14:00
• Our Amazon incident rates - 17:30
• How the newest Google updates affected our sites - 18:57
• Does domain rank really matter? - 22:35
• How to increase your domain rank - 23:00
• The effects of Google pigeonholing your content - 24:45
• Is it always a good idea to release only content that is sure to rank on Google? - 26:25
• Making it easier to create content through environmental design - 28:00
• The best way to future-proof your e-commerce business - 30:40
• Social vs. organic traffic - 33:57
• Updates on the brand we’re going to acquire - 37:53
• Adopting the right mindset for expectations in 2021 - 41:14

I’d like to thank Steve for being with me on this episode. If you want to know more about him and his business, visit the official site of Bumblebee Linens and take a look at his awesome handkerchieves and other products.

Here’s the link for eCommerceFuel Capital if you want to check out their services: https://www.ecommercefuel.com/capital/

Please don’t forget to leave us a review over on iTunes if you liked this episode and consider subscribing to get notified whenever we release a new one.

Here’s to a better year!

Happy selling!

Mike talks about where he’s been the past 3 weeks, and highlights how Masterminds have been instrumental in his business.

Today’s episode is a short one – I wanted to give a short life update on what’s been going on during the past few weeks. I’ve been a little absent for work in the past few weeks to attend a wedding, go on an anniversary cruise with my wife, and also to speak at the Sell + Scale Summit.

After getting back from Sell + Scale however, I started to feel a little off. That feeling started to suddenly get more intense, and before I knew it, I had caught COVID sometime after getting back from the cruise and until now I still haven’t fully recovered which has really pushed me back on work that I need to catch up on. 

Anyway, I wanted to talk about the real meat and potatoes of this episode – Masterminds. If you're new to the podcast, Masterminds are basically moderated groups of ecommerce entrepreneurs that will help keep each other accountable to their yearly, quarterly and monthly goals for their business and personal lives.

After just getting back from a weekend with my Mastermind group, I’ve learned that everyone has something that they’re going through, despite how much money they have or how successful they seem to be on the outside. 

And it’s not just in personal lives, but in business too. My Mastermind group started out after meeting each other in eCommerce Fuel Live and we first shared the common tips on how to get ahead on Amazon, and the like. 

But after 6 to 8 years of getting to know these people, it’s more personal now. We’re here for each other through the tears, through the issues that others have in their personal lives, and we talk about them with each other to hopefully help our lives for the better. 

Personally, joining a mastermind group has probably been one the best decisions I’ve made for my business, and I really hope that you'll see how advantageous it is to be part of one. 

If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to leave us a review on iTunes. 

Happy selling and I’ll see you on the next one!

Mike and Dave recap going to India, where they mark the biggest differences that they've seen between Chinese Trade Shows and Indian Trade Shows.

The India Sourcing Trip finally took place earlier this October!

Dave and I, along with a few friends and loved ones, went to India for the first time to check out the India Ecomm Summit, visit a Manufacturing Factory and see the Taj Mahal. 

Timestamps:

• 0:00 - Introduction
• 0:44 - Jet Lag
• 2:37 - Key Differences Between Chinese and Indian Trade Shows
• 3:37 - Product Differences
• 9:09 - Lack of Variety
• 13:49 - Product Quality
• 16:32 - Questions You Should Ask In Trade Shows
• 22:20 - Lack of Pressure
• 29:15 - Communication Differences
• 32:21 - Country Differences: Traffic Culture
• 37:14 - Country Differences: Sightseeing Diversity
• 38:50 - Visiting a Manufacturing Factory in India
• 42:43 - India Sourcing Trip

Shoutout again to Meghla, for making everything possible for Dave and I and setting us up with this eye opening trip. 

If you're interested in possibly joining the India Sourcing Trip next year, check out India Sourcing Trip which is managed by our friend, Meghla Bhardwaj. If you'd like to learn more about Meghla Bhardwaj, check her out on her LinkedIn page.

As always, if you have any questions or anything that you need help with, reach out to us at support@ecomcrew.com if you're interested. 

Don’t forget to leave us a review on iTunes if you enjoy our content. If you have any questions, send us an email at support@ecomcrew.com. We'd love to help you in any way we can. 

Thanks for listening!

Until next time, happy selling!