022: Bradley Sutton's Secrets to E-Commerce Innovation and Amazon Launch Success

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome everyone to the Brandfortress HQ podcast. I'm your host, john Stojan. I'm thrilled today to have Bradley Sutton with me. He is the director of training in the chief of valid evangelists at helium 10. Bradley is best known for his role at helium 10, the software solution that serves over a million amazon sellers, but what you might not know is he's also has over 20 years of experience in e-commerce, where he's launched over 500 products on amazon himself, um, and then also well at helium 10, you know that being his day job. He still actively sells on amazon, walmart, ebay, etsy and other platforms, and he also has his own podcast, the series seller podcast, where he has over four million downloads. So, bradley, I'm just super excited to have you on the podcast today.

Speaker 2: 0:42

Thanks for inviting me.

Speaker 1: 0:43

Pleasure to be here so you know, um, folks that are very familiar with the amazon community, probably, um, I have heard, you know, listen to your podcast are familiar with you. Many of them probably use helium 10. Um. So before we kind of dive into, um, some of the different Ways you can use helium 10, some of the different things that you're seeing in the amazon ecosystem right now, can you give people a little bit of background on you that may not be familiar, um, and kind of know your origin stories of how you got to helium 10?

Speaker 2: 1:17

Yeah, so, um, I, I live a long and color colorful history. As it comes to hobbies I've had and and jobs. You know I've done everything from being a sumo wrestler to being um international traveling, zumba fitness, youtube influencer and everywhere in between you're like complete offices. I always like doing weird things. You know I live in california and I used to have pigs and goats. You know, like like I'm just like trying to march to the beat of a different drummer but but uh, how I came into helium 10s, uh, radar is for for years I was working kind of like in e-commerce companies, but more like com, and then, um I I split with this one company I was working with who are selling. They just started selling on amazon a lot and I didn't know anything about amazon in those days outside of what my part of the business was, which was I was kind of like the guy to send all the inventory and I was Shipping stuff and packaging will fill by merchant and sending fba orders and things like that. Um, but when I split with them, like I really didn't know the the nitty gritty of amazon, you know.

Speaker 1: 2:20

Listing. So you weren't even a word, you weren't even the marketing guy, you were just the hey, let's make sure these things are. I was kind of like a money guy.

Speaker 2: 2:27

Uh, you know it was. It was a foreign, foreign, foreign people. So like everything had to be in my name, so like that was my contribution to company. And um, I had bought a house, which I still live here, that has a 2000 square foot warehouse, and so at the time what we did was we made the warehouse the, the company warehouse, and then I moved back in with my parents and then we made the house An office for the, for the company. So that was like my contribution and I was kind of like the warehouse Warehouse guy. It was pretty big. You know like we were. You know one point we were selling like maybe a thousand units a day of of products and and stuff. But my business partners really didn't tell me much of the other side, you know the pp. I didn't know what ppc was or or anything. And then so after I split them, I was like, hey, this, I don't know what I want to do, but this amazon thing Doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that there's some potential here. You know, like I was doing, fulfilled by merchant and packaging, sometimes five, 600 fulfilled by merchant items a day, using this machine to do that in like two hours, but I'm like it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that, hey, this is pretty cool, um, that you know, these guys might not even know all of what they're doing and we can be so successful. So I was like, let me go to a couple conferences and see what amazon's about and that's what kind of like opened my eyes to like the whole amazon ecosystem and like, yo, this is where it's at. And so that's where I kind of like dedicated myself. I did, but I skipped right to becoming a consultant. Like I didn't sell myself, I I became an expert in launch and became a consultant for my old business partners because they really didn't know what they were doing. And and then I just started getting you know through word of mouth, start getting a lot of clients. I wasn't even using helium tin in the beginning, um, and I was using other tools and I didn't like them. And I was like, hey guys, the keyword tracker I'm using sucks, like like this is terrible and they've got terrible customer service. Can anybody recommend like a decent keyword tracker I should use? And somebody it's like in 2016 Maybe? It was like, hey, you tried helium 10. I didn't even know really about helium 10, so I'm like, all right, I'll give it a try. And I was like, well, this software is amazing. They got all other stuff too and and I started using it a lot. And then I would go into their, their facebook group, and I would always like argue, I like debating, I would always argue people who are giving false information and and and stuff. And then the owners of helium 10 were like who's this guy. You know I like let's invite him in. And then I started working for helium 10. The rest is history.

Speaker 1: 4:47

Nice, well, I I do have to ask this because I just I can't let it go. So how did you go from Sumo wrestling to Zumba fitness, to e-commerce? Like what are those First two? How did those lead to even e-commerce?

Speaker 2: 5:04

So the sumo part of things was I've always gone to Japan. My dad had a business there ever since like the Vietnam war, like before I was born, and so we would always go there and I even lived in Japan I was little for like three years and so I love sumo wrestling like as a fan. And then when I was in my adult life, in my 20s, living in LA, I found out I was like wow, there's a sumo club. So I was like this is amazing, I could like live my dream of being a sumo wrestler. I didn't even know there's such thing as amateur sumo and stuff. So I did that and I got pretty good. You know, like one time I was like number three in the United States for my weight class and so I just loved it and but then I had to. In amateur sumo wrestling there's weight classes, like I just said. So I would keep my weight high at a certain level because I didn't want to like boxing and wrestling. I didn't want to go against somebody you know bigger than me. So what happened was that that wasn't a healthy weight for me. And the doctor was like, hey, you need to like lose some weight. And that was when I went to the gym. I'm like, all right, what is Zumba? This is, you know, before Zumba was a household name. I just saw it on the sketch. I'm like, what in the world is this weird word? And I went in there and I was like, oh, amazing music. And like, you know, 50 beautiful women and two dudes. I'm like, hey, this is the spot for me. So I started doing it and I was like, yeah, I can. They were like you should become an instructor. And I'm like, nah, I'm good. But you know, they convinced me that I just always I'm thinking about marketing and I always have that entrepreneurial spirit. So then I started making YouTube videos, and this is before. Like YouTube was a thing it's like 10, 15 years ago and it got big. You know, I got tens of millions of views, which, like today, would be like billions of views probably, or hundreds of millions of views. But yeah, I started doing that for years until I tore my Achilles tendon playing basketball and I couldn't do Zumba anymore. And that was kind of like when I started working for Helium Sand, but I've always kind of been an entrepreneur and always kind of had things to do with e-commerce. You know, like the first, you know the first Fast and Furious movie that came out, I was working for a dot com company that was into the you know carbon fiber hoods and exhaust and intakes and things like that. So yeah, my e-commerce career started like in the 90s. That's how long I've been kind of in and around it.

Speaker 1: 7:22

Okay, wow. And how do you feel like some of those early experiences? Because I know now, one of the things that I appreciate especially about the content that you put out is is that you know you do a lot of experiments, which I think is fantastic, because you know I've been involved with Amazon since kind of 2017, 2018. So not nearly as long a track record as you have, but I still hear a lot, and I've seen it change a lot, where you know Amazon has got more competitive, and I hear it from a lot of people. They're like oh well, the opportunity on Amazon is dead, like it's so hard to launch products, it's so hard to do this and this is now so much more expensive. So I just appreciate the content that you create about, okay, launching in 2024. What does that look like? How is it different? Well, how is it the same, that type of stuff. So how, how do you feel like those early experiences kind of helped you or keep you open to all the changes as they happen in e-commerce?

Speaker 2: 8:19

Yeah, it's important because even the obviously the dot-com industry since I was in it, you know had its ups and downs and I guess that kind of like taught me you can't when you're talking about e-commerce, I don't care if it's Amazon or off Amazon, it is not a set it and forget it kind of thing. You know, something could be absolutely working right now and then a year from now you're gonna have to completely pivot. You know that was what you know they were doing like phone cases back in the day and they really didn't know what they were doing. They went from selling a thousand a day, you know, within a year or two to like selling like 50 a day. You know, because they didn't keep their strategies, you know, up to date and they had to like switch industries because then they just let other people get too much market share, like the Spigans you know they were around before Spigans and Caseology and those other like very popular phone case companies. Now they could have been that if they would have, you know, kept innovating and staying at the top of things. And so that's like the main thing that I think is a constant in the e-commerce is you have to be always on the lookout for the changes that are happening. Whether we're talking about algorithmic changes, whether we're talking about buyer behavior, profitability, you know logistics, nothing stays the same. I mean, one week, everything is great. The next week there's COVID right. One week, everything is great. The next week a ship is blocking the Suez Canal. For a month, you know. You know like anything can change at any aspect in this, and so you always have to be make sure that you're up to date with what is changing and you're adapting your business for that you know. I think people nowadays realize that the whole mindset of laptop lifestyle and you go set up your store and it'll be an automation, and you just go kick it on the beaches of Hawaii or something like people understand that that's a pipe tree and that's not gonna happen, but at the same time, they might understand that but they're not really down and dirty into what is changing and adapting as quick as they should. So a lot of things, yes, are harder today than it was, but then also a lot of things are easier to be, honest. You know like you can't just throw some phone cases up and sell a thousand a day like we did, because things are more competitive, but, at the same time, the amount of data that Amazon sellers have today is just like ridiculous, not just on the tool side. I mean, healing10 didn't even exist in 2015. You know like, obviously, everything that Healing10 has now is just like if you were to take a time machine and show a seller then they would be like that is not real. There is no way that I can click a button and know how all the keywords that a product is ranking forget out of here. Forget about Healing10. Just, let's just think about if Healing10 didn't exist or any other tool. The stuff that Amazon is providing is ridiculous, like brand analytics and search query performance, the kind of things that power Healing10, you know a lot of this data. These are the things that in 2016, 2017, people were paying like $10,000, $20,000 for these black hat reports to get like other people's data and stuff like that. They were paying like bribing Amazon employees.

Speaker 1: 11:24

I was gonna say yeah.

Speaker 2: 11:26

What is available nowadays is better than that stuff you know. So, yes, things you know. Ppc is more expensive and there's more competitors. Sure, but for every little thing that is more difficult, there's also something that we didn't have like four or five years ago. That makes our job a little bit easier, I think.

Speaker 1: 11:44

Yeah, and I think that's a really good point. I mean a couple of things there is. Is that first is is that you know if you're looking for that laptop lifestyle and you know quote unquote passive income where you know you're just gonna launch a couple of products, get some traction and then go retire onto the beach, then you know Amazon is probably not for you. But on the plus side, if you're interested in building a real brand, there's a ton of opportunity on Amazon and even beyond that still in e-commerce. And I think you know. The other thing that you said that I is super important for brands that I don't think they take enough advantage of, which is, whether you're selling on Amazon or off Amazon, the amount of data that Amazon gives you on who's buying your product, what keywords are they using, how well are those converting. You can't find that data anywhere else in the ecosystem and just because you have that data on Amazon, most of those trends well, the size of traffic and that type of stuff might be smaller in other platforms, at least from what I see. You know a lot of those trends hold true on other platforms and other places where you're selling. So you can use that data in order to be successful in other places in your business and really understand your customer at a much, much deeper level than you can if you didn't have that data from Amazon.

Speaker 2: 13:05

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1: 13:07

You mentioned one thing about you know kind of all these changes. I'm curious because I mean, you've seen a lot of these changes. How do you think about that? Because it seems like you know there's probably, you know, I see at least two to three things a week that come out from Amazon, whether it be on the ads platform or how you know how things are shipped or those types of things where, for I think, for a lot of sellers and a lot of brands, it's hard to keep up. So how do you think about prioritizing? Hey, which of these changes am I gonna really dive into and what things can I just kind of yeah, it's great to know that that's there, but maybe that's just something that I don't, you know, I can kind of put on pause for right now and what to focus on.

Speaker 2: 13:49

I think it's different for different people. There's no one right answer to that, you know, like the wrong answer is oh, I'm just gonna, you know, stick my hand into the sand and not implement anything. I draw the line somewhere that maybe somebody else doesn't draw the line. For example, I'm old school when it comes to my PPC. I don't do like the bid modifiers like hey, you know, increase my bid 75%. If I have a heart, I'm like I don't want. I actually don't want the Amazon algorithm, like trusting it. If I have the ability to say no, I'm not gonna rely on the Amazon algorithm. I am 10 out of 10 always gonna choose that you know, because I don't trust it. You don't think that Jeff Bezos has your best interest at mine. No, we know that things sometimes don't always go perfectly, you know, especially on the advertising side. So like that is technically a new feature that Amazon has, but I'm not adopting it. So like I don't think that it's just, oh, every single new feature that comes out, you absolutely should implement it, or else you're kind of, you know, falling behind. Now, something like search query performance, brand analytics if you're not using that data, I think you're absolutely being left behind. That's like a factual thing. It's not something that you're actively using. That there's oh, is this valuable or not, or could this go wrong? No, you're just looking at data, and that is just mind blowing data where I can look at the keyword level and know how many searches there were that are denormalized according to Amazon, and then how many impressions products had, how many times people clicked on products, how many times people clicked on my products, how many people added it to the cart, and then how many people ended up purchasing with a 24 hour period. I mean, there is no scenario where that is not valuable data to somebody. So it's just a matter of like all right, look at the things that can definitely give you your business value, like search query performance, like product opportunity explore. You know, like you know Helium 10, we're always innovating, you know, new things. We don't do stuff just for the heck of it. Like, we do stuff because customers ask for it or because we genuinely think, hey, if you implement this new feature, your business is gonna be helped. But some of the things that we you know Helium 10 or Amazon offers it might not be for everybody. Like we might make something that's kind of like maybe more geared towards a wholesale seller or a merch by Amazon. You know seller. You know, like we make something on the listing optimization side. A wholesale seller could care less about that. You know like they're not even editing, listening. So like, don't take the time to watch my podcast. If you're a wholesale seller, don't listen to my one hour podcast on our new listing builder score, because that's useless, you know, to you. So focus on the things that are definitely going to help your business grow is kind of like my philosophy.

Speaker 1: 16:36

Okay. So just putting through that filter of like hey, does this apply to me? Yeah, which I mean I think on the face of it maybe seem a little bit obvious, but I mean I feel it as someone that you know helps Amazon brands and talks with a lot of Amazon brands of all these changes coming out and kind of feeling overwhelmed by everything. But if you put it through that filter of like, okay, does this as a brand or as a seller, does this apply to me? I feel like probably half those changes you know either don't apply or probably don't have a massive impact.

Speaker 2: 17:08

Yeah, like, is it just a shiny new thing that like sounds cool, if I use, or do you really see right through the value of it? And yeah, the fact is that not every new thing that Amazon or Helium 10 or any company comes out with is 100 percent applicable to you. But if you have to, yeah. And if you have to think long and hard about how it can help you, yeah. And you don't have that much time, yeah, probably move on. But if you look at something new or you read one of those releases on Seller Central and you're like, oh, my goodness, I've been wanting something like this forever, that's probably the thing you should, you should double down on. But if you're having to think like I wonder how this can, oh, I want no. You're like, nah, skip it.

Speaker 1: 17:53

All right, well, and you brought up something really important that I feel like everybody's aware of, what it is. I don't feel like, for whatever reason, enough sellers to use it on a regular basis in order to get value out of, which is, when we talk about data driven decisions, that search query report, especially now that you know you can not only look at it at the brand level but your actual, you know, asin level data. What do you think Brands or sellers out there kind of miss out of that report, or where do you think the biggest opportunities are in that?

Speaker 2: 18:33

Well, I think just it sounds dumb, but like one of the biggest things is is just using it. I think everybody has been in there. But then the problem is until it becomes available in the API and then tools like helium 10 can provide it in a Eat, more easy to consume matter. I think some people are just like not looking into it as much as they should because it's so tedious. Like all right, I got to go to my ASIN level and then I got to go week by week and week and then let me click on each keyword and say I mean, like it's really tedious unless you know you're like an Excel wizard and and and you know how to do data warehouses and you import everything and going to create some pivot tables and some V lookups and and this and it's kind of hard to deal with. So, but inside of there, um, it's. You know, the easiest benefit that somebody can get from a search tree performance is trying to see what you have a good conversion rate on compared to your competitors. You can see what the overall conversion rate for a keyword is. And again, this is just to keep in mind. This is not a hundred percent of the picture, what you see, in search tree performance is maybe only 30%, if that, of all the purchases, because it's kind of limited with with what it's showing, because it has to have happened in the 24 hour period and you had. You can't have clicked on a sponsored brand and this or that. And so you, if you actually compare the purchases that show in there to your sales, you're like, wait a minute, this is completely wrong. I sold 5,000 units. How come it only so shows me 900? Well, it's, it's apples and oranges, but still it's still valid. It's still a good information. But the thing that I think is the best is looking at where your conversion rate is better and then check. You know, going now, going back to helium 10 and then checking like keyword tracker, for example, all right, where am I historically in my sponsored ads, in my organic rank? And then you're like, wait a minute, my conversion rate is like 50% better than everybody else, but I'm showing up in sponsored ads mainly on page two. My organic rank is in the bottom of page one. All I have to do is help increase my organic rank and show myself at the top in sponsored ads and I'm going to crush it because my conversion rate is better. So, before you know, in the old days before search for performance, you just like all right, I know I think this keyword is important to me and I think I'm very relevant to customers. I'm just going to bid high on all my important keywords and like, hope, hope, I get sales. But now it's like no, maybe, maybe if your conversion rate is worse than your competition, you I'm going to dial back spend and I'm going to save some money because I'm like no, something's wrong. I got to figure out why customers are not converting on this. So that's just one simple thing that you have never, ever, ever, had visit, even in helium 10 or or in seller central. This data has never been available. So if people are going to do one thing with search for performance is check your purchase to click ratio compared to the overall keywords purchased to click, click and then double down on the ones that you're doing well on.

Speaker 1: 21:30

Yeah, I think that's amazing advice, that there's probably you know 20 other things that we could talk about with search query report that you could do, because it does such a great job of showing the full funnel, everything from impressions to how many sales are you getting compared to. You know the entire category for that specific key word. But I think, like you said, just keeping with hey, look to see where you're at with your conversions and how does that compare in helium 10 to what you're advertising to see where you're at.

Speaker 2: 21:59

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 22:01

So, with that said, you know, I think that's an important data point. Is there anything else that you can think of up top of your head? You know, when you think of data driven decisions, whether it be on, you know, amazon or even within helium 10, that's maybe one data point that you know. You were like I've been beating this drum for a long time, but I still feel like it gets missed a lot and is a big opportunity for sellers.

Speaker 2: 22:26

Yeah, I would say the number one slept on metric in helium 10. It's been there for years and it's near and dear to my heart because I'm the one who discovered it. Like five years ago, I discovered this data point in Amazon where, before what it had to do and, by the way, spoiler is called Amazon recommended rank. It's a little known column inside of Cerebro which everybody uses, cerebro, I would say, 99.9% of helium 10 users. Do not look at Amazon recommended rank. It's. It's has nothing to do with helium 10. It's not a calculation, it's not an algorithm, it's not an estimate. It literally is pulling from this data point in Amazon where before it was mainly to show what Amazon thought that you should advertise for if this was your product, and the crazy thing is you can see it for anybody's product, exactly what that person in seller central is seeing, and it and it scores it as far as what Amazon thinks is the most relevant. And now it's actually changed over the years more into a metric that really shows the relevancy of a product, or what Amazon's algorithm thinks a product, how relevant it is to a certain keyword. I'm sure you've seen this a billion times where you make a new listing and start your PPC campaigns, and maybe one you're not even indexed for the keyword. Now I don't mean ranking, but index you. You're not. You've got the keyword in your listing. You're not in it or you can't get. Maybe you are, but you can't even get a PPC impression. You've got this keyword in your title, like what's going on? This is, this is what my product is. How am I not getting impressions in PPC? And? And you kind of know the reason why Amazon must not think it's relevant. But you never had a way really to know predict what. What is the situation? But if you look at the Amazon recommended rank, the number one means the keyword that Amazon most things is relevant. And if it has a number of like 150, that means in the scoring system that Amazon has, it's the 150th most relevant term. And so if your number one keyword has a rank of like 25 or 50 or 75, then it's like a sign hey, amazon is confused about your product. It doesn't really know what it is. Maybe it's because you're in the wrong category, maybe you don't have that keyword in phrase form enough. Whatever the case is, uh, you're, you're going to have a heck of a time ranking for that keyword when Amazon doesn't think you're very relevant. So what I suggest to everybody is hey, you ever have trouble ranking on a keyword or getting PPC impressions, or just like I actually teach people now, before you can make your real listing, burn a UPC code, make a fake listing FBM, you know, just so you can. You can make it active and then run it through cerebral and then you can run it through cerebral and then run it through cerebral and you could do this within like 24 hours of having it. It's like a live feed from Amazon. It takes Amazon a little bit to populate it, but then you can instantly see, with no activity on on the listing, what Amazon thinks it is a good. Good example of how valuable this could be is I was doing a case study earlier this year where I was selling some socks that had a message on it. Now these were just regular socks, but on the bottom it says if you can read this, bring me coffee. So a lot of the main keywords for this product is like coffee Gifts for women If you can read this, bring me coffee socks. But like people actually search for that stuff. When I ran it I couldn't get impressions, though for anything with coffee I'm like this is like it's literally seven places in my listings, in my title. I mean this is the main thing. But then, if you think about it, it's like, well, wait a minute, coffee is like a grocery keyword. And then, yeah, socks are obviously in the clothing category, so Amazon must not have completely tied it together that, hey, this is what this product is. I threw it into Amazon recommend rank, all the top 50 keywords it's like black sock, pink sock, sock for home, and nothing coffee related. So it was like, okay, I haven't said enough of those relevancy signals to Amazon to let it know that this is an important keyword. And so, again, this is something that before you're just guessing. But if you look at Amazon recommended rank for any of your products, you're going to get some insights into what Amazon thinks your product is.

Speaker 1: 26:31

Yeah, and I think that I mean, first of all, just looking into that is so powerful. But then the other thing is the principle that I take away from that is understanding how Amazon views your product is super important. I've talked with a number of people and I'm sure you have as well where you know they're really struggling with a product, or really could even be their whole brand, and what it comes down to is that they're essentially fighting upstream against Amazon. Yeah, where they're just not set up to. You know work with Amazon and it causes a lot of headaches, and that's a perfect example of hey, if you're not, even Amazon's not showing you as relevant, it's going to be really hard for you to rank for that keyword and you've got to change something, like you said, on your listing, your category. You know there's a handful of ways that I know how to fix that and I'm sure you probably know a few more, but you got to figure out a way to make that connection for Amazon.

Speaker 2: 27:26

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1: 27:30

So that's a really good one, and I think that's a good point where? So, talking about data driven decisions, the other thing that you had on here that I think is really important is what are your recommendations for sellers and brands out there? You know they're looking at the data, they're testing different things, they're trying to push, you know, this product forward and brand forward, but, for whatever reason, what they're doing isn't working. At what point let's take like a product, for example, because I think that makes a little bit easier what would your be your recommendation on when they should start to pivot and think about pivoting to different strategies or even a different product?

Speaker 2: 28:11

Yeah, yeah, that's another, I think you know, definitely mistake that people make. Sometimes they get very emotionally attached to products and then they. That's when you stop, when you stop making data driven decisions. You know the yes, you can't just think only data. You got to think of the emotions behind buyer behavior and things like that that really can't be explained through data. But at the same time, you got to know when to pull the plug. Some people pull it way too late, some people pull it too early. You know, like I have this case study I'm doing right now, a lot of people know about the Project X coffin shelf that we launched years ago in our case study on YouTube and it was the number one coffin shelf for years and just kind of like died away a little bit. You know, part of it was our fault. You know some of our people who are in my account doing tests they screwed up one of the PPC campaigns and nobody knew about it and then, like we never like recovered from that. They like they stopped advertising our main keyword coffin shelf. I'll never forgive those guys. But anyways, regardless of what the reason is, it's kind of been dead for like a year, like selling one a day or two a day. You know something you said sell 20 a day, and so so could I have pulled the plug? Yes, because, like part of the reason was also competition came in. You know, I used to sell this thing for 30 bucks and competition is coming in at selling for 20 bucks, which I'm not going to do. But I had to lower the price like 24 25 just to just at least stay somewhat relevant, and that's very near my break even point. So, at the end of the day, what you decide to do should be about profitability. It's not based on emotion, but it's like all right, if you're losing money on this product or breaking even, it's not worth your time. You got to cut it. But the problem is that some people just do that instantly when they see it and that, I think, is a little bit too quick. You got to ask yourself have you done everything you can to to make sure that it's just not viable? So, like right now, I'm not sure what the answer is for my coffin shelf. But I'll tell you what I did. I did a research into the niche and I went into people's reviews. I'm like, wow, everybody is kind of like buying either, like these little mini pumpkin as a decor for this thing, or like skulls, like all these creepy people buying this product. I can't even understand them anyways, but but I'm like I could clearly see that and also, at the same time, I was looking on research, on product research, and I found something completely unrelated. It was heart shaped gift boxes, like a gift, like an empty box. That was somewhat fancy, not like a brown cardboard box, but was like white or red and shaped like a heart. And people are just buying these like 17 bucks for a gift box shaped like a heart, and I'm like All right, this is what I'm going to do for the coffin shelf. I'm going to give it one more try. I'm not going to cut the pull the plug yet. I'm breaking even. I'm not losing money, but let me invest more money into the product. Let me find a couple of those trinkets that people are already buying to put in there. That cost me maybe 20 cents each, so it's not adding too much. So it's not adding too much. And instead of just doing a regular cardboard box that probably cost me 20 cents each, let me invest in a dollar and 50 cent or $2 custom coffin shaped, spooky looking box that now becomes like a product. It's what the package is is packaged into, but it's also a standalone product that has value. We're like, hey, use this coffin gift box to to gift something else, or or use it as your sock storage for your spooky socks or whatever. So now I'm in the middle of like a relaunch. Or I'm like All right, I'm going to start low with the price, but let's raise it up and can I go back to selling this for like 32 33 dollars? Everybody's still selling their coffin shelves for 20 bucks, but can I get some traction back Because I'm offering all these other things that nobody's going to take the time like me and and compete against you? I'm sourcing this from like three different factories. You know coffin shelf is not a big enough market for the, the, the, maybe factories who are competing with me to go and try, and you know, copy what I'm doing right. So so is it going to work? I don't know. It's working good, pretty good so far. I was able to boost up the keyword rankings and things like that, but if it works, it's great, because now, all of a sudden, I added $2 of cost, but I was able to add like $10 to my retail price, and so now I'm going to be profitable again. But at this point, if it doesn't work and people are just like Now, we just want the $20 coffin shells Well, again, I'm not going to play the race to the bottom game. I'm going to have to cut, pull the court, even though this is like a very sentimental value product, because it was what we started our case study on. I'm going to go ahead and pull the plug if it's not ready. But that, to me, is like a process that people should should take. Follow the data. Don't just give up at the first sign of adversity. Do some research. Is there something you can do that could possibly work? And then, if that doesn't work, yeah, we want to something else.

Speaker 1: 32:52

Well, yeah, so many good things in there. I mean, the first thing is on emotional level. I hope it does work out, because I've been hearing about these coffin shells for years.

Speaker 2: 32:59

I would be very sad to see them go.

Speaker 1: 33:04

I'm also really curious as to you know, after talking about that kind of that first year, how many coffin shell competitors you ended up with.

Speaker 2: 33:11

Well, it's funny because there's people on. I mean, yeah, it's the saturated nation. There's like 20, 25 people trying to sell the same thing. One guy came up to me. I might have been at the prosper show or sell scale event, I'm not sure where, but he was like man. You know, I actually launched a brand, almost the same as the Manning's Mysterious Audities, and I think he's like one of these guys. I think I might know who he is. I think he's one of the ones who did like the coffin makeup shelves and stuff and he built a million dollar brand around around the idea of Project X. So that that to me, is not I don't get mad at that. You're like, first of all, project X is not my account, like I run it 100% but Helium 10 pays for it and they keep all the profits etc and we use it for testing. So it's like it's not bad that he stole market share from me. That, to me, is a lot better than me having still been the number one coffin shelf, to know that that thing inspires somebody to build a million dollar brand. It's kind of like crazy to even think about.

Speaker 1: 34:07

Yeah, that is really cool and you got to respect game. You know somebody puts that amount of effort I'm sure right, but a ton of effort into building that million dollar brand. So the other thing that I think that really stands out to me. That, I think is a great point and I'm curious whether you know it works out perfectly in this situation or not, because I think a lot of sellers are feeling the pain of this of, okay, well, you know, now I've got competition from Chinese sellers and maybe it's, you know, even within the United States or around the world of people selling on Amazon US. There's just a lot more competition in the last couple of years than there was previously and you really do have to be on your game. So I just love that as a very tangible example of how you did some deep research into looking at the particular customer base, looking at those reviews, figuring out a way to add value where, yeah, it costs you a couple extra bucks but it also allows you to charge, you know, $10 more than most everybody else in the marketplace, which in itself sets yourself, it sets you apart. Like, why is this product $35 and you know that product is $20. If you're looking at the same ones on page one. You know, I think there are enough people on Amazon that want to buy a good product that are going to look at that and say, okay, you know there's enough value here that I'd rather have the $35 product.

Speaker 2: 35:31

Exactly, exactly. And so you know there's somebody having a podcast a while back, um and Ferris. You know she has like a baby brand and she was talking about she actually goes into launching new products and she wants to be the most expensive. Because you think about people buying stuff for their babies. It's like do you want to be known as the cheap parent who are like trying to cut corners and Like get something that might not be great quality for your newborn Kid, or do you want to be known as the parents like no, I get my kids the best, like that's what I think some amazon sellers easy to get out of their mindset where it's like no, amazon is a price war and sure, in some cases it is. If you're selling garlic presses or or something that there's no innovation or the quality is all the same, almost no matter what, maybe it is a price war. You know phone cases is another example, but but don't get in price wars, guys. I never want to compete in those markets where it's dictated by just who's the lowest cost. Uh, sometimes, go for, go for niches where you can come in as a higher price one and it actually works out. Works out better for you.

Speaker 1: 36:32

Yeah, well, the other thing that I think is interesting out of that is is that you know this whole goth the core Unless I misunderstood, you sounds like it's. You know it's not like something that you, you know, are deeply into, where you know like goth the core is really your hobby, but you just saw an opportunity there and, um, you know, you have a brand based on that, so it doesn't have to necessarily be your passion in life in order to be successful in a category, to sell products successfully.

Speaker 2: 36:59

Yeah, yeah, it's that. That's really important. Like you know, I love Gary v. Actually he was doing a meeting greet here in my neighborhood like I couldn't believe it. I live in the middle of nowhere and he was going to a local yogurt shop and I went there and fanboyed out. But one thing that he says that doesn't apply, in my opinion, to amazon sellers Is like you can't really just do what you're passionate about. You know, like, if you're gonna become a youtuber or something, yeah, you know, if you're passionate about sports, you're not going to be successful talking about true crime. If you're not, if you don't care about it. You're gonna be more successful as an influencer if you're talking about sports. But in amazon it's not like, oh, I love, I'm passionate about, uh, water bottles. Uh, I'm an expert on water bottles. Let me go ahead and make a water bottle brand and I'll be successful because I'm passionate. No, because it's saturated, right, but you have to make yourself passionate about whatever you do decide. So when you decide what product you're going to go with, you got to take passion out of it. But then, when you're all in on that product, now you make it your passion. I it is almost against my morals, to sell coffin shelves, like it's a little bit disturbing, like I don't understand the kind of person who would want that in their house, but guess what? So I was not passionate about it at all. Guess what? I'm now probably one of the world's top 10 experts on the kind of person who would buy a coffin shelf, because I made myself passionate about it. Because you're not going to be successful if you kind of have this. I don't care about what I'm doing, attitude about your, your products, and and I say that it's extremist of course there's people who are not passionate about what they they sell. You know somebody who's selling screws and nuts and bolts or whatever. Sure, I know this is not a blanket statement, but just a way to help give you an advantage or to help set you up for success. Get passionate about the product that you're selling, even if it is nuts and bolts or a screwdriver or something like. Know everything you can about who would buy that and what kind of features that kind of your customer avatar Is, is, is looking for, and that's going to make you a more successful amazon stores. But but, but don't go into your product research saying I'm only going to focus on this Kind of product, because that's the kind of products I like to buy. Could, could you miraculously find something that just happens to Be a huge opportunity and you're passionate about, sure, but but that's like one percent of the time. It's going to be like that. 99% of the time it, the product that you're going to see demand on and where there's room for you, is probably something that you might not have never even heard of before. You found it in helium 10 or in seller central or something.

Speaker 1: 39:30

Yeah, yeah, and I think that's a good. What it sounds like you're saying is you know, you don't necessarily have to be passionate about the niche or the product, even specifically, but you do. You need to be passionate about understanding that customer base, you know, and how they think, and then also in serving that customer. So that means knowing a lot about the product, knowing a lot about what people want out of that product.

Speaker 2: 39:51

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, you got. You got to do that's. You know, amazon sellers make a lot of mistakes, but but that's one of the ones too where they do not understand their, their customer avatar at all. Um, they kind of like base their listing, their product, their keywords, everything on what they think it is. But not everybody is the same kind of buyer that you are. You know, like sure I might type coffin shelf to find a coffin shelf. Another person might type in macabre decor or something you know some crazy keyword that you've never even thought about. So You've got to do yeah, you've got to do the customer research.

Speaker 1: 40:29

Yeah, and I I haven't, you know, still a lot to learn, but I have enough experience to know that I have seen enough crazy brands and crazy products that you know I I don't understand them. Um, I don't necessarily fully understand their audience and the you know what drives people behind them, but I do know that you know there's People that are passionate their brand and are willing to pay good money For their products because they see the value in it.

Speaker 2: 40:57

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, if you don't know your own value prop, then you're gonna have a hard time Convincing other people that it's that, that's that it's valuable for sure.

Speaker 1: 41:06

So just Quick question how did you end up with coffin shelves Then? Was that just what was in black box, where you saw the opportunity?

Speaker 2: 41:13

or Uh, we documented it in in that youtube. Like I don't remember the exact, I think what it was was we were looking up, maybe the word was we were just like randomly looking on etsy and Pinterest. That was how we found it and it was like gothic decor or something like that, like like not exactly coffin shells, and we're just like, hey, what's what's trending on gothic decor? I think is how it was around the time of Day of the deal, those muertos or Halloween or something right, and so a lot of things were trending. And then we saw a lot of on Pinterest and etsy, like these coffin shaped shelves. And then we're like, oh, this is interesting. And then we look on amazon and then it wasn't there and so like to this day. I think that is a great way of doing product research. Look on websites that are ahead of amazon, be it tick tock, be it etsy, be it Pinterest. You know, for a new product to get on amazon it has to go through, you know, production and samples, a brand new invention or something. From the time that it's first conceptualized, it might be six months before it comes on amazon. Somebody has a new idea or new invention. It's On etsy in a week because somebody's making that in their garage or something it's on Pinterest. In a day because somebody's just taking a picture that they saw, or an idea or drawing, they put it on Pinterest. So sometimes these other websites are months ahead of amazon as far as what's trending and so it's. It's kind of like a cool way to to get ahead of the curb when it comes to amazon.

Speaker 1: 42:37

Okay, well, and that transitions really well into the other piece that I want to ask you about. So you're doing these recent launches? Uh, it sounds like you're. You've launched four products recently. Um, yeah, talk to me about kind of how that the launch for these four products is similar and different from, you know, products that you've launched in the past and what you're seeing, um, as far as changes as as amazon matures.

Speaker 2: 43:05

Yeah, so what I was known for even before my helium 10 days is um. You know, you mentioned I. I launched over 500 products. I would say 400 of them. Almost 400 of them was before I even worked at helium 10. That was my specialty. I didn't know anything about ppc back then. I didn't know anything about. You know a lot of you know logistics as far as importing and stuff like like a lot of Aspects of the amazon journey. In my beginning I didn't know about what I became an expert in first was product launches. Um, there was a company out there, zonblast. I was like one of their biggest customers because I was just doing it for all my, my customers and and I just Love the whole concept of how I could literally predict Easily any kind of launch 100 success rate as far you know the. The products might not have all done well, but success rate in that. Hey Customer told me the key word that they wanted to to rank on page one. For I'll tell them exactly what I need to do and it would happen 100 of the time. Um, whether they stay on page one, that well, that's, that's not really not up to me, that wasn't what I did. But in those days, you know, when two step URLs Uh, search, find by was not against terms of service, um, I loved it, you know, made my job easy. Then obviously the hammer came down where they finally did put it in terms of service or they're like hey, we don't want people using these things. And so now you know rebates and stuff like that is all of a sudden against terms of service. So I had to switch my strategy for the last two years. But it works almost the same where it's just using ppc. It's the same concept. Instead of giving away products or offering rebates, I I make it at a humongous sale price, like maybe it's 75% off or whatever price. I think that people would buy it, uh, who might not have bought it normally. But they just see in the search results. They're like oh shoot, this product has zero reviews. I'm not even sure if I needed this product, but 499 for this 30 dollar Uh water bottle, sure, I'll give it a try. And then it's basically search, find by, without search, find by, because people are searching a keyword, they see my ad, they click on it and they buy. It's the same exact thing as when we used to use these outside services with two-step URLs and things like that. So that's like the biggest change of like today compared to like four years ago, uh, where it's a lot more work because I could just pay a service like zonblast or az rank and say, hey, I need 20 people a day to buy this if they search for this keyword and then boom, I'm done. Um, now it's like I gotta be watching my ppc throughout the day. All right, I got three orders today. Let me shut off this target until tomorrow. All right, I need to get three orders tomorrow on this keyword? All right, let me, let me you know. And then I have to be modifying the, the price and things like that. So it's more of a hassle, um, but uh, I don't mind it. You know, I think it kind of weeds out the kind of lazy people out there who maybe we're just using these kind of services and maybe ranking products that didn't even deserve to be ranked. But now it's like the only way you're going to get to the top is if real people are actually buying your product you know from, from ppc, and so it kind of like uh, evens the playing field, in my opinion, a little bit.

Speaker 1: 46:09

Okay, yeah, and that makes, makes a lot of sense. I'm just curious on kind of the um, the details of that. So Are you starting with a higher price and then selling a couple units of that price, so that way amazon kind of has a reference price and then discounting from there?

Speaker 2: 46:26

Yeah, so the very first day or the very first time I make my listing active, I make sure somebody buys it at whatever is my list price, all right, and then I never changed the regular price of it. I either do one of two things I do a sale temporary sale price right after I have that full price purchase, or on some situations what performs better is like a humongous coupon or something like that, where it's like a 50% off coupon or $10 off. Sometimes that works out a little bit better conversion rate. I kind of experiment a little bit and then it's like, once I've gotten the velocity and I think organically I'm going to stick a little bit more, I just start raising that price a little up. I hope that the reviews come in. I actually don't turn on review requests. You know Helium 10 obviously has follow up where I can automate the request review. It's not necessarily against terms of service to use that, but me just being very careful, since Amazon is very carefully used, I don't actively send that request review to anybody I've given a huge discount to, just because I don't even want any notion on Amazon side that there might be impropriety going on where it's like, hey, wait a minute. You gave this person 60% off and now you're asking them for review. It's not 100% against terms of service, but again, I just I don't want to mess anything with the review, so I'm not asking for reviews, but some of them are still going to come in, right. And then so I have a few reviews. I'm like all right, I think I can raise the price a little bit and basically until I get to what my target price was. And then by that time I've got some reviews, I've got good velocity, people are buying my product and we're good to go.

Speaker 1: 48:04

Okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So, when you're looking at because I know one of the things for launch, so, for example, in Helium 10, and I forgot, I forget exactly what it stands for, but it's like your CPR, which is essentially like how many units per day you need to sell in order to rank, do you find that Amazon gives you quote, unquote, full credit for those sales, even if you discounted at 60, 70% off?

Speaker 2: 48:35

Yes, yes, so it's designed to work with this, like the CPR number. I'm actually the one who came up with the formula I mean not the actual formula, like I told my data scientists at Helium 10, like exactly what I was doing. And then they came up with you know I'm not a mathematician but where that number came from, the new one. That's like the third version we've done. You know, manny Coates is the one who made that the founder of Helium 10 way back when, and then it had a version two. Now this is a version three. So what I did was over six months I launched like 40 products and then it would like kind of like base it off of all right, well, I am doing discounts or sale price or coupon price, and it doesn't. You know, like it does, it doesn't really affect that like it still worked exactly the same, the same way. And then the factors that did affect it would be stuff like title density, like how many listings on page one have that exact keyword in their title. You know the age of the listing. You know the older listing, the more data it is on it, it's going to take a little bit more. So if it's a brand new listing, you know there's no official honeymoon period that we call it, but we all call it the honeymoon period. It just refers to like Amazon doesn't have enough data on this product. So, like any little thing, it has a bigger effect on it, because it's what we call that the honey, the honeymoon. It's an Amazon term, but but if, if a listing is newer, you might need less units to do because because of that effect. So there's a whole bunch of things that go into that formula. But yeah it, the number you see there is for, like, if you're doing full price or if you're doing discounted.

Speaker 1: 50:12

Okay, yeah, I think those are some great things for people to keep in mind, you know, especially if you know maybe you haven't launched a product in a while or you've kind of struggled with some of your launches. I think that gives some really great insights. Was there anything, as you were launching these four products, that kind of surprised you, based on your experience that you've had before launching products?

Speaker 2: 50:33

Yes, One thing was I didn't run, you know, I didn't find, I didn't even follow my own advice, but I didn't run Pickfoo on it. So Pickfoo is something that's been around for a while where you can pull people about you know, hey, what do you think of this image? What do you think of this price point? And Helium 10 has like Pickfoo built into. It's called Helium 10 audience. But I kind of rushed in the first couple of days. I'm like man, my click through rate sucks and everything. I got my, my, my, my pictures and everything professionally done. I use AMZ one step. They're really good at images and I love the image. Like they did exactly what I asked them to do. But then I was like, all right, they gave me three different white background options. Let me just throw this up in a Pickfoo poll or Helium 10 audience poll and let's see what customers saw. And the one that I picked was the worst of the three. It was like voted on literally 10% or 10% or less. It was like not even close, you know, sometimes like 50, I was like way, way, way off on what I thought was the best picture, and so that just kind of reminded me is like sometimes we get too much on the algorithms. Oh, my algorithm stuff was all on point, like I knew my title, densities and and the relevancy scores, that we've all that stuff. But again, do not forget about the end customer. You are selling to a human being and I forgot that. You know. I didn't forget it. I was just too lazy really, but but that just was a reminder to me. It should be reminded to everybody out. There is, yes, have all your ducks in a row on the the scientific side and the algorithm side, but at the end of the day, the algorithm Amazon they're not your customer. A human being is your customer and you got to make sure your, your listing is attractive to them. You got to make sure the right image you've got, you know, showing up. You got to know what the right price point is. So never forget that aspect.

Speaker 1: 52:22

Yeah, and I think what to me was so interesting out of that is is that I mean, I think we all think, well, I think I'm fairly smart, I've seen a lot of things, that I'm sure over 20 years you've seen a lot of things too. And just to go through that process and go, hey, I think this, this image, is the best. And then to put it through, like you said, the Helium 10 audiences or PickFu or something like that and figure out that you know your customer base thinks something completely different and like, like you said, at the end of the day, they're the ones that are actually going to be fine that product. And so you really really have to test especially important things like your main image, in order to confirm even if you think that you're right, just to confirm that you're right when you're launching a product or even doing a listing optimization 100%. All right. Well, bradley, we've got all the way from. You know, looking at data and kind of making those decisions, talking about pivots and the other, and then talking about launching new products. What is maybe one piece of advice that you'd have for you know brands out there that have some traction, but they're really looking at. You know how do I continue to grow my brand on Amazon and beyond?

Speaker 2: 53:31

Yeah, I think it's. You got to understand where you should be selling. You know, don't get too distracted by a million marketplaces or be too scared. Oh my goodness, timu and Sheen and all this stuff and TikTok shop. Tiktok shop can be absolutely amazing, like I've seen some ridiculous, ridiculous things where new Amazon sellers do a quarter of a million dollars in like three weeks on TikTok shop. It's, it can be amazing, but it's not for every product, all right. So Walmart can be great. You know, in general it could do about 10% of sales on Amazon. Sometimes it could do more than than what your Amazon sell. I know people who sell more the same skew on Walmart, but it's not for, not for everybody. You might have a product that's not at all, you know, like some luxury brand product, probably not the best for Walmart. So it's like if you want to keep growing, sure you got to keep innovating on Amazon itself, like we've talked about. But if you want to grow your brand, choose, pick and choose the right marketplaces to expand to. Don't just do it just because you can oh, I'm going to sell on Facebook marketplace just because I can't know. Pick what's right for your brand. You'll test a little bit at first and then whatever works well, start doubling down on that, but don't just like spread yourself so thin because you're trying to sell on every single marketplace possible. That that you know your core market places, you lose focus and and it starts you know your core business starts suffering because of that.

Speaker 1: 55:02

All right. Yeah, good advice for sellers out there is, you know. First of all, be willing to test some of those different marketplaces, but you don't need to be everywhere at all the time, because there's, just at this point, too many platforms. So I think that's great for brands to think about where, where do they fit in that picture? So, bradley, I appreciate all your time today and a lot of things for sellers to take away from this. For people that want to, you know, keep up to date with, you know, these experiments that you're running with the launches and all the other things that you're doing. Where are some good places for them to go in order to keep up with all the things that you're working on?

Speaker 2: 55:38

Yeah, so you know, definitely, look at the Helium 10 YouTube channel. Every week I put, I put a, an episode there where I it's called the weekly buzz, right, just let everybody know what's what's going on in the e-commerce world. You know, there's there's stuff that are all literally every every week. There's crazy things happening at Amazon, walmart and other worlds that sellers need to be aware of Serious sellers podcast, obviously on any podcast platform. And then, you know, sometimes I have a crazy traveling journeys and stuff that you mentioned, so I document those on my Instagram so you can just go to serious sellers podcast on Instagram and, and you know, one week you might see me in Pakistan, the next week in Germany and who knows where I'll be next.

Speaker 1: 56:19

Very nice. Well, I'll put in a plug, especially for the weekly buzz, because I think that's one of the main things that I look at to keep up with what's going on with Amazon and just in the e-commerce world. So you guys do a fantastic job with that. Thank you, Bradley. Thank you so much for being on the podcast and spending some time with us.

Speaker 2: 56:38

Awesome. Thank you for having me.