10 Lessons Learned from Successful Ecommerce Sellers at the 7-Figure Seller Summit feat. Gary Huang

 Do You Have What it Takes to Be a 7-Figure Seller?

Gary shares 10 specific and actionable tips, that in essence boil down to a few must-have character traits for success. What does it take to be a successful million-dollar eCommerce seller? For starters, you must have:

• Tenacity to weather any kind of storm that your business will put you through
• Curiosity to never stop learning
• Creativity to come up with solutions outside of the box and catch your competitor off-guard
• Flexibility to bend or change direction in an instant
• Focus to see the end in mind – in most cases, a successful exit from eCommerce
• Foresight to anticipate issues, challenges, and roadblocks to your success

Top 10 Secrets to Ecommerce Success

There must be hundreds of top 10 secrets for entrepreneurs scattered across the web. How’s what we have here any different? Well, if you care about growing your brand into a 7-figure business (or more) – then this is the top 10 list you’ve got to pay attention to.

So, without further ado: the top 10 secrets to success according to 7-figure sellers are as follows:

1 – 7-Figure Sellers are quick to pivot

The pervading theme in a business owner’s life is that changes can happen overnight. A successful entrepreneur must be adaptable, decisive, and must know when to pick their battles.

2 – 7-Figure Sellers diversify

Successful entrepreneurs will never put all their eggs in one basket. Diversifying all your business processes lessens risk and allows room for more growth.

3 – 7-Figure Sellers focus on their bottom line

Being a business owner involves a balance of being conservative and aggressive with your bottom line in mind, i.e. ensuring every decision is profitable. Bring down costs, widen your margins, and always be on top of your profit and loss statement.

4 – 7-Figure Sellers measure, track, and document everything

The motto is: whatever is measured gets managed. Put everything on record – writing, documents, contracts, email trail. Systematize. Implement SOPs. Don’t leave any stone unturned.

5 – 7-Figure Sellers cut away slow-moving inventory

Pay attention to your inventory and know which ones are not performing as expected. Liquidate them right away. Amazon offers a liquidation program for slow-moving inventory – take advantage of that.

6 – 7-Figure Sellers think outside the box

There are so many competitors on Amazon – and it’s only going to get more crowded from here. Chances are, your old tactics are also the same old tactics of your competitor. Always be creative and think of new things to offers – stay fresh, relevant, and outstanding.

7 – 7-Figure Sellers are good at PPC

Remember this – success as an Amazon seller can only be achieved by page-1 rankers. If you’re not on page 1 – you better be working hard to get there. Beef up your PPC strategy to take your listing to the top of search results. Let the PPC results influence your organic ranking – helping you cut down advertising costs eventually.

8 – 7-Figure Sellers drive external traffic

There is a world beyond Amazon and you need to pay attention. External traffic is a major contributor to Amazon’s buying population (49% to be exact). Make sure you boost external traffic through social media, online ads, and more.

9 – 7-Figure Sellers use affiliate marketing

Don’t forget that word of mouth is the most trusted and most effective form of advertising. Affiliate marketing follows the concept of word of mouth – getting other people to talk about and sell your products to your audience.

10 – 7-Figure Sellers use video marketing

There’s a reason why TikTok and Youtube influencers are so relevant nowadays. Video content is dynamic, engaging, and persuasive – perhaps more than any static form of content could ever be. Take advantage of video marketing and create some of your own.

The fact is – there really are no secrets to success. They are not secrets – they are out in the open. But it takes guts and grit to practice them – and not everybody has those. Because not everybody can be a 7-figure seller. But you’re not like everybody else, are you?

 

Transcript

Amy Wees: Thursday morning here in San Antonio where we have had some crazy weather lately. Today I’m so excited to have my friend Gary Huang on and we are going to be talking about well, let me just start by saying Gary has this amazing 7- figure seller Summit. And I got to speak at the summit last year. And not only did I enjoy speaking, I also enjoyed learning from so many of the presentations. What’s unique about this summit is that Gary pushes us speakers to speak on things that we have never spoke on anywhere else, something new, something different. And so when you attend this summit, you’re going to get something special from every speaker. And so you’re going to want to catch every single thing that is presented at the summit. But what’s so cool is this is Gary’s fifth Summit. And every time he has a summit, he writes up this kind of playbook, these lessons learn from every speaker, from all the attendees from the things that he took away. Those takeaways was key takeaways from from the summits. So it’s really, really awesome. And we’re going to talk about those top takeaways today. So stay tuned, because you’re going to learn something today, and it’s gonna give you value. And we also want you to check out the seven figure seller Summit. So I’m gonna go ahead and put that link there as well. And oh, sorry, I need to edit my ticker. So while I edit my ticker, I’m going to ask Gary to tell us a little bit about himself in his background.

Gary Huang: Excellent. Thank you so much, Amy, for having me. And I’m super excited to be on today with you guys. As Amy mentioned, my name is Gary and I’m an Amazon seller myself. I’ve been selling on Amazon for a number of years and got started on E commerce like many, many years ago selling on eBay. So basically, I’m the founder and host of seven figure sellers Summit is entirely online. And my mission is to really help Amazon ecommerce sellers, build, scale and exit their businesses. And I love the quote by Jim Rohn. He said you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So I know a lot of sellers, you know myself included, sometimes we feel isolated. We’re like a one man show or one woman show. So I’m really help trying to invite the seven figure sellers to really come online so you can learn from them. You can surround yourself with like minded entrepreneurs, you know, people like Amy. So you can really level up your business. And I feel like especially this year, it’s kind of a, a unique year. I mean, obviously, we’re still trying to go out of the pandemic. But putting that aside, economy’s continuing to boom, q4 is coming up really fast. And I’m super excited about that. But at the same time this year is unique in the sense we’re kind of going through this perfect storm of logistics challenges. The high shipping costs shipping from Asia, to the states, and also the delays coming out of factories. You know, COVID is, unfortunately the Delta stream it’s making an impact. In many factories. I just spoke with an eight figure seller in China, he said one of his factories in Jiangsu Province got affected by that. So they’re experiencing another delay, and also the Amazon inventory restrictions that everybody is dealing with right now. So I’m really trying to help you guys by inviting these seven and eight figure sellers to share a little bit about what they’re going through their strategies to navigate through all these challenges. So they can really win q4, and you guys can learn from them and do it too. So that’s kind of the story behind seven figure seller Summit.

Amy: Awesome. So I’m so excited to have you here to talk about these takeaways. And it must be it’s so cool to host a summit like this because you get I love recording my podcasts because it’s like I get to it’s that time that I have to set aside to learn from someone every week. And it’s just it’s in your business. Sometimes you don’t make the time to grow. But every time I make the time to grow, I grow. So it’s just really incredible and impactful. And so I’m excited also to make the time to listen to these, these awesome presentations at the seven figure seller Summit. So why don’t we get into these takeaways? What would you say Gary is the number one takeaway that you’ve learned from previous summits?

Gary: Yes, yes. So I would say having interviewed over 107 figure sellers, Amazon sellers ecommerce X spurts, you know, there’s a couple of things that keep resonating. And I just, these are just my personal take rules. But number one is something that has to do with the mindset. And I find that successful entrepreneurs, especially this year, they’re very agile, they’re very quick to pivot, almost like little speed boats going, you know, through the ocean to catch fish. They’re not like an ocean liner or the Titanic, right? So us as Amazon ecommerce sellers, you know, we’re not like the big corporate brand where, you know, they want to make a change of their factory or their three PL they have to go through layers of bureaucracy, and finance and legal etc. These successful entrepreneurs, they’re really, you know, changing so quickly. One of the perfect examples is an eight figure, Amazon seller, Cameron Walker, who I spoke with, Cameron is Canadian, He’s based in China, actually. And him and his family run an eight figure business and he shared just within the past, like six, seven months, he really revamped his entire business, he’s in the toys category. And he sells primarily on Amazon. So he, you know, faced with these logistics challenges, he’s, he changed his three PL, like his previous three PL was just like totally exploding and kind of raising their price. So they had to change at 3pm they had like four container, loads of products, they had to move around, he was like soliciting bids from different VPLS he changed his freight forwarder, even though they had a relationship for many years is you know, right now, the the shipping prices are skyrocketing, we’re seeing prices up, over $20,000 A container in where it was only like, you know, $1,300 Before COVID, which is insane. So, you know, you had to change the freight forwarder. And then also, with all of these, you know, Amazon inventory restrictions, we’re seeing a lot of sellers, you know, have to pivot very quickly. They’re using three POS. And Amy, you also shared as well, right? I mean, you’re using a warehouse that’s across your street, I remember.

Amy: Yeah. And I’m grateful for that, because it allowed me to quickly pivot during the pandemic. And it allows me to quickly pivot during these these restock. You know, these limited restock quantities, it allows me to quickly see feed Amazon and my other channels. So I also use deliver, which is a three PL that helps me fulfill through Walmart and other channels. And yeah, it’s, you know, the thing is, I’m very lucky that I have large margins on a lot of my products, but and then the product that I have smaller margins on is made in the USA. So that’s helpful. But I am seeing that as well. I’m seeing in my mastermind group folks are finding new suppliers in South America, in Europe, they’re doing anything they can to get out of China with the up there’s not only you know, up, up, up shipping and logistics charges, but there’s a lot of backlog in China that’s causing people a lot of problems in China is having labor shortage issues, because they’re quickly growing and changing. So yeah, I would say the need to pin it is so important. It’s it’s huge. It’s like okay, worry about what we can control. What can we control? And that’s so he so is anyone at this at the seven figure seller Summit? Will they be talking about these logistics challenges? And do we have a presentation on that?

Gary: It’s actually like a pervading theme through you know, most all of the sellers, right? I mean, everyone’s doing different things. Some sellers like Zen Chen, he’s using Chinese three pls like I asked him about this and then he says that it’s more cost effective to have all his his products moved from his Chinese from the factories he uses into his Chinese three PL and they literally hold it there and then they’re sending shipments in at a faster frequency. So he says

Amy: the smaller shipments that all are LTL

Gary: yeah LTL rather than full container loads because he’s using a Chinese freight forwarder and then they’re able to consolidate different shipments, different Amazon shipments from one and then put it into a container to enjoy those savings. So

Amy: If we look at all of the the major e commerce sites, you know that are coming out of China, like one of my favorites is sheen y’all don’t shop on sheen. I’ve gotten so many people hooked on that website like if you were at prosper, and you saw me like all my outfits from prosper or from sheen, but It all goes out of China. And it the prices are great. And it gets to your door in like a week and a half. And, yes, it’s not as fast as prime. But for a greater selection and greater prices, people are willing to wait for it. So it’s and you know, they are really efficient with their shipping. We think Ali Express has been around for a long time. And they’re one of the leading and wish some of these other e commerce platforms where a lot of stuff comes out of China. And so smaller shipments out of China can be really cost effective. So that’s, that’s something to look for. And you guys, the key word there to look for that is fulfillment centers in China. And you’ll find those, there’s actually filament centers like Gary was talking about. All right, well, that’s a really great takeaway. I love that. What else we got? What’s the second takeaway?

Gary: Yeah, other than that, we’re also, you know, one of the common themes is, don’t put all your eggs in one basket, which is super risky. All right, so this theme, you know, we’re seeing sellers doing this with their products, right? You know, it’s very risky to have just one hero product that’s generating like the lion’s share of your sales. And, you know, like minions, a company that is generating a trickle, right, so what if something happens to that product? Would it be suspended? What if there’s a quality problem, you know, it can really sink your ship? Right? So definitely, you need to diversify your products. I spoke with one seven figure seller based out of Pakistan. And then he really had an interesting product launch strategy, he actually launches with five products. And then he goes small and light. So his strategy is very And then they’re all small and light, and then he can upsell them. So that way you can yes, yes. So I thought that that was a very interesting strategy, because you’re not putting all your eggs into like one product that you’re launching, because if it doesn’t, if it doesn’t get traction, then you’re back to square one. Right? So I mean, he’s almost playing the law of probability. And he’s, it’s almost like an investor’s mindset, right, you’re like diversifying your stock portfolio. So but still at a low cost, he’s able to control that initial launch budget to $5,000, or even lower,

Amy: and he’s getting five products out of that. And you think you can design the inserts on every one of those products. Check out this save 20% off this, you know, I mean, I love that idea. And all the things you can do on your own website and other ecommerce channels with that really, really cool takeaway. So I just want to say hi to everybody who’s watching on the stream right now. Hey, guys, leave us a comment. Say hello, we want to get you we want to hear from you. You know, tell us, tell us, you know what you’re learning from here. And whether you’re excited about the summit and all that stuff. Leave us some comments. We’re happy. And

Gary: I’m curious, like, what are you guys struggling with right now? Like, if you can share, what’s your number one challenge? Just so Amy and I can learn more? You know, like, you know, what you guys are dealing with? Maybe there was a session that that’s coming up that could could help you overcome that. Right. I think that could be one way we can add value I love Yeah. I love these interactive. I’m actually in Japan, Amy. It’s like, I think it’s you guys are the morning. I’m at 10pm. So please keep me engaged as well. All right.

Amy: keep you awake, you guys keep. Hey, Andrew, it’s so great to see you. Thanks for saying hello. And yeah, everyone, let us know what your number one struggle is because Gary might have some tips for you. I mean, he’s got such awesome tips here. So don’t put all the eggs in one basket. And something I learned from that too is for shipping purposes. Don’t ship everything. Whether you’re shipping to Amazon or shipping from your supplier in China don’t put everything in one container. Because how many containers have been held up for months, how many shipments going to Amazon have gotten lost. So it’s, it’s really, really important to do that. So cool. EJO has a question. Yeah. Do we want to do want to take a question now or do you want to move on to the next tip? And then

Gary: if it’s related to what we’re talking about, absolutely. I’d love to. I’d love to keep this interactive guy.

Amy: Okay, let’s do it. So it’s kind of related to our first Our first tip which was pivoting quickly. So he says what is the product launch strategy that is working post COVID. So a new product launch strategy and it’s interesting because you talked about this person who was launching five different products kept it small you light and was cross selling,

Gary: right? Yeah, I Like, so Saqib, as har, he is a seven figure seller. He’s British Pakistani, and He’s based in Pakistan. And he actually runs the largest Facebook group of Amazon sellers in the world. I just was introduced him recently. So he had this unique strategy, where he focuses on spa and light. So in addition to, you know, being able to launch five products at a lower budget, you also have the, you know, the fact that these products are small and light, right, so you’re able to ship them at a lower cost, because you’re not shipping like huge, bulky type products. We’re seeing that a lot of the sellers are selling bulky products. They’re really struggling right now, ever since August 1. Yeah, it’s so expensive. And there was like an additional, like, general weight adjustment costs from the free forwarders. It’s like an additional four to $6,000 per container. So those guys are, if anyone’s coming up on top, I think the freight forwarders they’re like making out like bandits with all the money that they’re making, you know, but Well, it’s

Amy: interesting, I heard that some people are some of the freight forwarders, or the shipping companies, I don’t know who to blame. But I’ve heard that they’re holding on to some of the containers, and that’s increasing, instead of sending them back. Yeah. And that’s it, there’s

Gary: a shortage of containers. You know, I mean, just with COVID. I mean, that’s a whole different topic we can talk about for another day. But

Amy: so I would say the the product launch strategy is mostly the same. It’s the same strategy that works before you want to have a really great listing, you want to have great advertising, but as it changed on Amazon, so the top of search ads are pushing the organic listings down. So you have to know what you’re doing with advertising even more than before. And then the other thing that you have to learn to control post COVID Is your costs. Because with all these extra advertising costs and extra shipping costs, you need to go back to the drawing board and figure out what you can control because the same launch strategy work as worked before. But the difference is, it’s more expensive now. So now we need to make sure that we don’t just have those little 30% margins, or we don’t have an extra large product, look at some of your products, look at how you can break them down and one of ours we sell a foldable products, and we folded it in a different way and saved over $10 per unit and Amazon fees. So you know what you’ve always done before, you might need to take a look at it and think about the ways that you can do better. What would you say Gary about is about product launch strategy post COVID,

Gary: I think you really hit the nail on the head, Amy. And that leads us to one of the other key points, which is focusing on the bottom line, right profitability, not just the top line, because the top line, you know, seven figures is kind of a vanity metric, because at the end of the day is the bottom line, what really matters, right? Especially how much profit you can keep in your pocket. And especially if you want to exit your business, which is another big theme we’re seeing this year. So in terms of launch strategy, this year, we’re seeing a lot of sellers, they’re really tempering their expectations when it comes to their profit and loss statement and their profitability. They’re seeing lower profitability due to the higher costs, besides the higher shipping costs, there’s also the raw material cost increases, the labor costs increases. So we’re just seeing these costs rising all over the board, and also with q4 the storage costs with Amazon. So we really have to be careful to to nor to know the bottom line. So I think Amy also she mentioned a great point about you know, optimizing your your packaging, right? So one of the the other seven figure sellers also really optimize their packaging to be smaller and lighter weight than their competitors. So this way, they can actually move down in the Amazon size here. So if you’re able to do that you can shave possibly, you know, sends to even dollars, right? So that could really help with your,

Amy: for us it was $10 for the same product on Amazon. That’s amazing. We went from like, I think what is it? Small, small, it was like, extra large standard or something to regular size, and to standard size. And that really made a huge difference for us. And you know, and I agree, you know, so many people are wanting to sell their businesses. And I worked with a lot of the aggregators and a lot of the folks that are responsible for helping people sell their business like fortunate. And I’ve seen that, that the key struggle in there and I’m working on selling my own business and the key struggle is making sure that you’re profitable that your bottom line Mine is still profitable. And that might mean taking another look at your products, because you need to have a product that you can control the price, some of you might have to raise your prices. And if you’re in a very, if you’re competing against a factory on a commodity product, and factories, their struggle is they just aren’t used to selling direct to consumer, they’re used to selling wholesale. So they set their prices very low, and they try to make up for it in volume. And so if you’re competing against those factories, it’s going to be very difficult for you to absorb extra shipping costs when they may have logistics options, you don’t have like using fulfillment in China. And the You also are going to have to compete on price and reviews. So another big thing about post COVID launch strategy is making sure that you take a second look at your products and look at what you can do either to differentiate them in a way that matters to the customer. So you can raise your price without, you know having to losing sales, right? But also in the future, how can you have really great margins, you can do that by differentiating in that way where you can control the price, you can charge a little bit more of a premium price for something. So definitely, I think that’s going to have a lot of people focused on their products as well.

Gary: Yeah, and similar. A similar point is, when it comes to dealing with sourcing, right, many of these sellers, they’re putting all their eggs in one basket with just one factory. Right? So I mean, you have to be realistic nowadays, because costs are going up. So if you’re just, you know, chained to that one factory, what if they increase their costs? Or even God forbid? What if someone gets COVID at that factory, and the whole factory gets shut down? Right? So we’re seeing a lot of smart sellers diversifying, right having a backup factory. And also, in terms of negotiations, I see that, you know, Andrew, had a question as well, my current struggle is ordering more inventory and a long lead time with my supplier. What are good strategies for negotiating price and the time? I think one of the top strategies is using comparison. Right? So Andrew, if you have shortlisted your, your suppliers to, let’s say, three, three factories apart, you’re able to use comparison, like you know, your you can get quotations from factory A, B, and C, and you can compete them against each other in terms of the pricing in terms of the lead time. And I find that’s one of the most effective ways of negotiation that they work with. What are you thinking? And what how would you? Yeah,

Amy: I think it’s so important, Andrew, to make sure that you focus on your relationship with your current suppliers. I agree with Gary wholeheartedly that having more than one supplier looking for different suppliers and making sure that you’re not, you know, your whole supply isn’t, again, eggs in one basket. We talked about that in Tip two. But the other thing to really focus on is building a relationship with your supplier and having contracts. I was on a client call yesterday and, and my client launched a really unique version of a product. And she didn’t do a design patent or file for the copyrights. And now people are actually stealing her photos and her design. And she did so good if she just launched something small and her margins were excellent. But she didn’t take the time to protect it with a contract with her supplier. So there’s no guarantee that that supplier is now not going to go sell her design to everybody else. Right. So it’s, it’s very difficult. And you need to focus on making sure that number one, you talk to your suppliers on a regular basis, set up video calls, build those relationships with them know who works there and build a relationship with them. I realized we can’t visit right now in person because of COVID. But I want you to work on building those relationships, because that’s going to go a long way. And secondly, after you build that relationship, I want you to contracts. It’s just good business to have things in writing. So you don’t have things in writing. And I get passionate about this, Gary, because this is something that I deal with constantly with sellers on coaching calls. It’s like what happened there? Why didn’t we have those timelines on contract? Why didn’t we have anything written in our contract for failed inspections, or failed to deliver on some of the timeline, or inferior materials or warranty on our products? Those are things that you need to have a contract for. So get those things in writing, get you a Chinese attorney to draw up your contracts for you. There’s plenty of them. You can find them on Upwork you can ask your local attorney to recommend someone in China that can help draw a contract and that way you kind of know for each of your suppliers once you set up that firm foundation with one supplier, you’re going to that’s going to last you for years with that same supplier you can have one contract I do a general conditions agreement. I think that One contract and lasts me three to five years with one single supplier. And we cover our timelines, and pricing and payment terms and all of that. So make sure that you’re negotiating upfront. You’re getting to know your suppliers upfront. You’re building those relationships upfront, Andrew, and get those things in writing because it’s just good business. Great question. Yeah, so good. I love all this value we’re giving.

Gary: I love it. This is awesome. Yes.

Amy: So I just want to say hello to Tim Windsor. He’s here. He’s always here. He’s always here, you totally support our, our YouTube channel. So appreciate you, Tim. And ayos given some thumbs up, so appreciate you guys. Being here in the US, we’ve got time zones all over the world.

Gary: So with that, let’s let’s get into another tip. Yeah, definitely. I like what you shared about the contracts. And that relates to one of the other key takeaways, whatever it gets measured, gets managed. So this is a quote by Peter Drucker, one of the biggest business management gurus through the years, and we’re seeing that as successful sellers, they really have all their documentation in order having standard operating procedures, you know, Systemising their businesses. And this is important not only as you scale your business, which is one of the biggest challenges of seven figure sellers, but also if you consider an exit buyers like to see that they like to see if you have SOPs this way, the transferability is a lot more seamless. I know like a lot of sellers and you know, I’ve been guilty of this as well over the years we’re kind of like, you know, thinking we’re a one man or one woman show we’re doing everything ourselves but guys, you really have to start documenting everything you’re doing, you know, get consider hiring that VA and then you know, if you’re able to create the SOP, then you can take it off your plate to him or her so that you can work on your business and not in your business. So that’s one of the keys in terms of whatever it gets measured gets managed. And then measuring also your all of your little costs and expenses running an Amazon business I know everyone’s really excited about growing their business you know, launching that new product, but at the same time sometimes you got to measure you know the you know, all of the expenses and one of the examples are with Amazon reimbursements right so whenever Amazon loses your inventory whenever Amazon has damaged of your inventory in their warehouse, and sometimes they miss measure your product sizes, I’ve had this happen to me, if you don’t file a case to claim those back, Amazon’s just gonna pocket that money. So a lot of sellers are really leaving money on the table. You know what I mean? I agree

Amy: like so many sellers. We have a little reimbursements course where we just walk you through how to file your own reimbursement Plus, there’s really great reimbursement services that will do it for you and you just pay them a small fee of what you get vaccinated nothing to lose like our folks that get EDA.

Gary: Speaking of good Tito, they’re one of our sponsors. So quick shout out to them. And they gave us a Yoni Majora gave an awesome session on how to do that how to unlock these profits. The first

Amy: time I filed for reimbursement a few years ago, the first time I filed for one I got over like $2,000 back. So and I had only been selling like, consistently I’ve been selling since 2007. But this is when I like jumped back in and started kind of doing more of a full time store thing. And I had only been selling for like less than a year and I got all that money back. So if you have been selling for years, and you’ve never filed the reimbursement, imagine how much money you’re leaving on the table.

Gary: Exactly. And guys, keep in mind, Amazon only allows you to do this in the past 18 months. Okay, so don’t put it off. I know some of you guys may be selling for years, right? So you know, it’s that 18 month window, you have the chance for you guys to claim it back. And if you guys would like to get a free pass at the summit Katina is offering $400 in Amazon reimbursements for free, no cost to you. They’re offering a special offer at the summit. So I think that’s a no brainer. If you do want to get that. I mean, obviously Amy is showing you how to do this yourself, which is fine. But if you don’t,

Amy: I completely agree that not everyone has time to do it themselves. And it’s a very manual process. So it’s good to learn the process of doing it yourself. But it’s also really good to hire it out. Because unless you can build that into your SOPs, you know, you’re not going to do it. So I’ve used both I use the Managed Services, which I like and then i At first when I did it and learn to do it myself just so I would know like, what’s involved in this and what kinds of things can get reimbursed. And then I hired it out because I was like okay, I don’t really want to open up You have to open up like 20 cases, yeah, and deal with Seller Support for lead your team to take care of that for you.

Gary: Let the experts do that. And you know, you only pay them if you get paid. So if you don’t get anything, you don’t have to pay them anything. So definitely that’s, you know, one of the ways whatever gets measured gets managed, right. And I think another thing a lot of sellers have been overlooking, is slow moving inventory. And a lot of sellers, myself included, you know, sometimes we have, we have some winners, we have some, you know, some non winners some losers, right, so they’ve been stuck in Amazon’s warehouses, gathering dust, and they’re racking up the long term storage fees, right, in addition to just like the mindspace, they, they, they take in your head. So one of our seven figure sellers, Sophie, Howard, she shared her ways that you can really get rid of this inventory, there’s different options on liquidation, and then it really, you know, helps you two ways, right one is to cut out those long term storage fees. And, and to actually, you know, this hurts your Amazon, IPI score, your inventory performance index, which will limit your inventory. Yeah, so it’s actually like a double whammy, if you are able to get it out and you know, cut out some of the slow moving inventory, it should help to boost your score. So this can help. Yeah, absolutely.

Amy: They have a new liquidation program. And so if you go into so if you’re looking for liquidation, I get this question all the time, like at work by liquidate slow moving inventory. Amazon is liquidating it now. So yeah, have that convenience. So all you do is you go into your inventory, you click that little edit, drop down on the right hand side on your manage inventory screen, and you click Create removal order. And it’s okay, you’re not removing it, there’ll be an option in there when you create that removal order to choose liquidation. And they’ll walk you through the steps and you can click the little liquidation button. And Amazon will make you an offer on your inventory. And you know, it’ll, it’ll get sold in other ways. So if you’re looking to free up space, the other thing that I learned from Charles yet so stocked on inventory management, is that if you are out of stock of one of your products that also your sell through is what limits your restock ability. So if you’re out of stock of one of your products, and that’s counting against how much more you can send back in. So also try and manage your inventory overall. So that you’re not you’re you’re limiting stockouts

Gary: Yeah, that’s a great tip. Thanks for sharing that. That’s awesome. Yeah,

Amy: we’re full of tips today. Imagine how many tips I mean, Gary, you guys, Gary asks all of us speakers like tip questions at the end of our presentations. Not only do we have to he’s a tough, he’s a he’s a tough summit leader, but he’s effective. And that’s why the seven figure seller Summit is so awesome. But well, I mean, for those tips.

Gary: I’m a seller myself. So you know, it’s by sellers. For sellers, I asked the tough questions, because I’m curious myself, right. So. But Amy, Amy gave an awesome session. And actually, that leads us to our next tip. Our next takeaway, can we can I talk about that next?

Amy: Yeah, let’s do it. Moving on to tip six.

Gary: Yes. Tip six is to think outside the box outside of Amazon to find profitable products, right? Because, you know, it’s so competitive now, what works like in 2016 2018 isn’t working today, right. So I know, there’s still a lot of people that use like the same tools out there. And the thing is, if you start out at the same place as everyone else, you end up at the same place as everyone else. So what might look good right now in that tool, if you’re using the same criteria and filters everyone else is, you know, three months down the line, there could be hundreds of other people selling the exact same product, right. So we’re seeing a lot of the seven figure sellers use different types of product selection approaches. And Jason Taylor is a seven figure seller based in Australia, and they he uses kind of a hybrid approach. So he he finds profitable products, both using a keyword based approach, but also he considers PPC as one of his key factors. So he looks at the search results and he looks at the the sponsored brands, the headline ad if there’s any relevant ads related to this search query. If not, then it’s a green light. So we’re seeing different new ways in product selection to find profitable products. And

Amy: other I’m talking about at the summit is how to find exactly

Gary: I wanted to highlight your session next Amy, would you you’d like to share more about your your avatar based approach. I’d love that. Yeah, so

Amy: I’m talking at the summit all about, I love to study the market. And I like I’m teaching you how to expand in your existing niche on my presentation. So a lot of sellers struggle, they’ll launch like a success, they’ll find one successful product or sometimes even two successful products. But they’re not necessarily related. Right? Like, okay, I’m in four different categories. And I’m not in the reason that they’re struggling is because they just can’t think of something else they can sell to their audience, or other audience members that they’re missing, that they haven’t sold to yet. So it’s, I teach you in my session, how to break down your avatar and how to think about different aspects of a person or a niche that you can sell to. And this is hopefully going to give you so many ideas that you can then use the rest of your techniques that have worked for years, to narrow in on, you know, looking at, you know, interests, looking at all of those things. So this is a technique that I’ve used for years that I teach in my course, and it’s very successful, the folks that have gone through our course and have done this use this strategy have had a 100% success rate at launching those products because they can control the price. And because they’re speaking to the market, they’re first to market with a product that no one else has. So it’s it just sells really well that people are actually searching for. And you’re not going to find that on product research software, because product research software shows you what’s selling, and then you have to guess at how to differentiate. But if you find the customer first, you’re gonna figure out how to differentiate and then you can just launch a product to them. Yeah, I love the saying find your buyer, find your buyer before you go to sell a product. So that’s what we’re what we’re covering and something that I’m really passionate about. And I love to to do. It’s fine.

Gary: 100% and I highly recommend that you guys get your free path to seven figure sellers Summit. So you can check out Amy’s session in addition to the other over 25 sessions we have from seven figure sellers, I think,

Amy: yes, 25 sessions. I’m so excited. All right, let’s cover the next tip. What do we got next, Gary?

Gary: All right. So the next one is PPC, Amazon PPC, it’s becoming more and more pay to play King. Amazon PPC. Why is that? Because I don’t know about you, Amy. But whenever I searched for something on Amazon now, the top of the search results is just bombarded with ads, right? You have the headline ad you have like the sponsored brands ads, and you have like the new video ads coming on. So it’s like the organic search results, a lot of times are pushed to like the number four result or even like the second row, right. So if you’re not getting a piece of the PPC action, you’re really missing out on that prime real estate that buyers see first. So that’s why it’s becoming so much more important. At the same time. The according to the PPC experts I’ve spoken with the cost of ads are going up. And the reason for this is ever since March, Amazon is actually experiencing kind of a sales dip, right? If you look at your BSR a lot of the you know a lot of sellers that are kind of like scared so they’re just like pouring money into PPC to try to boost their sales, right. So that’s resulting in the cost of ads going up. So with the PPC experts that I spoke with Bryan Johnson, he runs canopy and he’s overseeing like a billion dollar of ad spend, which is Amazon clients. Amazon Seller clients he gave a really good training on listing optimization. So guys before you spend a ton of money on PPC you really have to make sure your your listing is converting really pay attention to your conversion rate to your images to your title and how your ad looks compared to your competition. So Brian gave an awesome masterclass on how to stand out how your listing can stand out in the search results. He had a live example about cake decorating kits. So it was amazing because if you look at the the search results, it was almost like a carbon copy of like, as a main product, the same thing, right? The same thing, the same arrangement.

Amy: You know nothing Brian and I share Brian and I share this passion in France here in San Antonio and we share this passion for listing optimization and for changing it up and really speaking to the customer and connecting with psychologically to the customer? And yeah, so him and I can talk about that for hours. And we’re just like, yes, you know, because it’s Yeah, it makes a huge difference. Like, if you change like the folks that have changed their listings using these strategies, I have like a seven photo strategy that takes people through there. And it’s similar to what Brian teaches. So you’re gonna get the same thing. But the results we’ve seen as people go from like, immediately just from changing their photos, from 5% conversions to 30%. And that’s without even adding any extra seo into the listing. And then imagine when you add the right SEO, so it’s just, I mean, it really makes a huge difference in in listing reviews. That’s something I see a lot. I want to say hello, we have a few other folks here. We’ve got angels here saying Good morning, guys. We’ve got Nathan. He said, I just became a five figure seller. That’s amazing. Nathan, seriously, it’s the first congratulations. That’s so awesome. And then we have Katrina out Karina, excuse me is here as well. And she says Hi, great things. And Tim says thanks for the shout out. Andrew says thanks, guys. So just appreciate you guys for being here. Let’s keep the tips coming. Gary, what do we got

Gary: some? All right, let’s keep going. The next tip is in terms of external traffic, okay, driving, external traffic is becoming more and more critical to Amazon selling why? Because Amazon is really your giving you a boost in ranking when you’re driving external traffic. So one of the seven figure sellers that we had on is my Jack Nicklaus, and he really explained the importance of driving external traffic to help your rank and then he’s also doing a lot of stuff with authority websites. So he’s building authority websites related to his avatar and his niche, and he’s driving traffic that way. So he’s enjoying a significant boost in his Amazon product ranking from external sites. Also, previously, we had on on the summit, Matt singers, and he showed how to use affiliate marketing, you know, reaching out to affiliate websites that, you know, are Amazon affiliates, you know, they get Amazon commissions and you know, they’re creating reviews like top 10 lists for, you know, for your products for your niche like, you know, pet products, kitchen products, so you can leverage that as well. And then you can also enjoy a ranking boost from that. And the other thing is related to external traffic is video marketing. So we’re seeing a lot of interest in Tik Tok. We had my aunt Gordon come on in, she has over 2 million followers on Tiktok. She runs a class gift

Amy: channels, a couple of channels with, with, like, over 5 million followers on each and she’s generated like billions of views online. She’s a LinkedIn coach. I just had her in my mastermind group the other day teachingher LinkedIn profile. Really Wow, he’s incredible. She is such a Shining Star. If you guys haven’t caught anything by mine yet. She’s gonna be in the seven figure seller Summit.

Gary: Yeah, she’s going to be on day two, talking all about the future of video marketing for ecommerce, tick tock. So one of the key takeaways is external traffic guys definitely look into that. And then Amazon just really introduced a new Amazon brand referral scheme, I think, Amy probably already mentioned, guys, but it’s a 10% 10%. Kind of like a cashback and your Amazon fee. If you use Amazon attribution, we have Paul Harvey, he’s an expert at that he’s going to tell you how to do that how to implement that. So you’re not only getting the the boost in ranking from your external traffic, Amazon’s gonna they’re gonna pay you a percent. Yeah.

Amy: That you just set ours up. We do Google ads to our Amazon listings, and we just set ours up. And, you know, it’s we haven’t seen any results yet. And it uses Amazon attribution. And Amazon attribution used to be kind of clunky. So I’m hoping that this new program helps them to step up their game with Amazon attribution, and we can all benefit from it, but it was super easy to set up. So definitely check that check out that presentation and get it set up. You got nothing to lose and everything.

Gary: And we always find that, you know, when things first come out, it’s a lot easier to to reap the benefits of benefits of that before everyone else rushes in, right. So maybe a lot of your competitors are not aware of that. Yeah. So you can really cut your expenses that way and think about that. 10% just goes back to your pocket, which is profit,

Amy: right? Awesome. Yeah, so we have covered 10 Top takeaways. I’m gonna go through these takeaways one more time and then we’re going to wrap up the show and tell you guys how to get into the seven figure seller Summit. There’s a link right up there BIT dot L y Ford slash ah seven F s s so check that out, you can sign up let’s go through the tips. So the first tip was that successful ecommerce sellers are quick to pivot we talked about pivoting, moving things around getting things done. We took some questions that was great. Tip number two successful ecommerce sellers don’t put all their eggs in one basket that’s either with shipping or products or suppliers. We don’t put them all in one basket. Tip number three successful ecommerce sellers focus on the bottom line because it’s so important to be profitable if you want to make an exit. So we also need to make sure that we’re profitable and we’re controlling our costs and what we can control we talked about a lot of tips there. Tip number four successful ecommerce sellers get know that whatever gets measured gets managed. So remember to think of your business as hey, if I were to hand it off tomorrow, what would happen really think about what needs to be measured in your business, how to track it what to do and build out those SOPs for a successful business there. Tip number five successful ecommerce sellers pay attention to slow moving inventory that can affect your restock quantities all of that which everybody’s you know doing so don’t forget about Amazon’s liquidation. We talked about that, go back and watch it if you missed it. And tip number six successful ecommerce sellers think outside of the Amazon box for profitable products. So we’re not just looking on Amazon tools we’re doing other things we’re finding other ways to look up keywords and everything else. And there’s going to be lots of tips on that at the seven figure seller Summit. Tip number seven successful ecommerce sellers are good at Amazon PPC, as we talked about top of search is getting more expensive. There’s more ad placement there now we got to learn it people don’t scroll past page one. So if we’re not on page one, for relevant keywords, we’ve got to learn Amazon PPC. So check out those things and you’re going to learn that at the seven figure seller Summit. Tip number eight successful ecommerce sellers drive external traffic I love external traffic and we talked about taking advantage of Amazon’s new referral bonus program you can go right in Seller Central underneath the brands tab and click on referral bonus and you can set that up but definitely check out the session on that because you got to have some external traffic to set that up and we’re going to cover that at the seven figure sellers on it. Okay, tip number nine successful ecommerce sellers use affiliate marketing Hello get other people to sell your products come on. We need influencers we need affiliates people want to make money. So give them the opportunity to help you sell your products and we’re gonna learn about that at the seven figure seller summit and tip number 10 successful e commerce sellers use video marketing video is the future think about tick tock think about YouTube think about all of the places where you can get your products in front of an audience take up that space on the internet you can do it on Pinterest you can do it on Instagram you can do it on tick tock you can do it on Amazon you can do it on Amazon lives Amazon post there’s so many places to get your product featured make some videos I mean I hired somebody on fiber for $40 to take just my Amazon listing and they created with stock video footage and incredible video that I use for my video as people you have no excuse get moving attend a seven figure seller summit we got the link right there you’ve got no excuse How much is it going to cost them to attend the seven figure seller summit Gary

Gary: it’s free we have a free pass yes we have a free pass for you guys you can watch is a five day event every day. Once we go live August 16 You can get all the sessions unlocked for 24 hours for free. All you got to do is just go to that link enter your email address and you’ll have your free ticket all the details in your inbox so I really think it’s a no brainer. Oh my god you guys you guys have been awesome. Can I offer a bonus tip like I there’s one other thing I want to share with you is that okay with you or you should always offer bonus I just wonder all right. Okay, the last tip all right, for a lot of a lot of you guys the end game right why are we doing this right exits selling your business. Many sellers they overlook the fact that a seller’s ultimate payday like over 50% of your lifetime your your your payday from your business is going to come when you sell your business, okay? It’s going to be more than the salary that you pay yourself every month and I’ve spoken to many Many, many sellers that have successfully exited. Many of them want to ask them? Why did they sell? They said, You know, they love their business. It’s like their baby, but at the same time, it’s very risky, right? I mean, it’s probably worth more than your car or even worth mortgaging your house for a lot of you guys that are already at that level, right? So think about it is very risky, especially if Amazon is controlling all of that, and what if, you know, one day they, you know, they suspend you, right? I mean, we’ve seen it happen many times. So that’s why it’s very important. In the last day of the event is really dedicated to preparing your business for an exit structure in our business to sell it, we have eight figure sellers that successfully exited their business, we have experts to show you the common mistakes, what not to do. I think probably the biggest mistake is waiting too long, you know, not preparing for it. So no matter if, you know, Nathan just became a five figure seller, you know, he’s probably not going to exit anytime soon. But I think it’s good to at least know, you know, at least your books, right? You want to do accrual accounting, you don’t want to do cash based accounting, you’ll learn more about at the summit that could add 10s of 1000s of dollars.

Amy: No hard way I was doing the wrong kind of accounting for the first couple of years in my ecommerce business, I had a redo, I find a new account and redo everything. And then now preparing to sell has actually, I went and got some help to prepare to sell my business from an amazing provider fortunate. And they helped me realize what would keep my business from a better valuation. So even if you’re not ready to sell yet, Nathan, you’re at five figures, you’re going to totally grow that to seven figures, we know it. Let’s start with the end in mind. And what you’re going to gain by watching these folks that are experts at helping people exit is how you need to set up your business now to exit successfully in the future and get top dollar for your business as possible. So for me going through this process, I’m not ready to sell yet. I’m going to try to sell them next year. But this year, I’m focused on so many pinpoints that I was helped with and now we’re seeing higher profits, our tacos is down to 9%, which is amazing. That’s the lowest it’s ever been. We’re what we know what to measure. We said look at whatever gets measured gets managed, we measure so you guys can’t miss you cannot miss these these exit strategies. You’ve got to learn them now. So that you can set up your business now. And you can start working on those things that need to be measured and managed.

Gary: 100% And you know, we covered a lot today, guys, I feel like these are just my personal Top 10 takeaways. I mean, I’m sure when Amy watches she’s gonna have her top 10 I’d love to hear what your top 10 are. But I’d love to invite you guys to come on to join me session and also catch the over 25 other sessions. Link is below for a free ticket. I think it will help you guys a lot, especially right now we’re navigating through this perfect storm all of these Amazon inventory restrictions, higher costs, you know, I think it’s, it will help you guys a lot. And yeah, I just appreciate you being on Amy. Thank you. Yes,

Amy: yes, definitely. Thank you, Gary. Like there was so much value that you gave us today. And I know that this audience, whether they’re sleeping right now they’re going to catch it later, or whether they attended today. I know that they’re gonna get so much value out of this and they’re gonna get so much value out of the free. The free seven figure sellers on it. You guys, all of us speakers are giving you information we haven’t taught anywhere else and you can get it free. I mean, you got no excuses. So get on it. That’s That’s an order.

Gary: But anyway, since Amy, you guys, listen to me.

Amy: I love you guys. I love this community. You guys are amazing. Gary, thank you so much for being on today at 10 o’clock at night. Japan is probably 11 Now we’re gonna let you go to sleep.

Gary: Thank you. Thank you for having me on guys. I hope it was useful. And yeah, thank you, Amy for having me on. It’s super fun to be here. It’s been it’s been awesome. So I’m super grateful.

Amy: Yes, awesome. Thank you all everybody said thank you so much. Karina says she’s going to be there so just appreciate you guys for being here. And for also for those catching the replay. And we’ll see you guys next time. Don’t forget to check out my tip that I posted on my YouTube channel yesterday about how to use Trend li which is a trend where you can find new Amazon products. There’s like it’s like an eight minute video you guys so check that out as well. We’re really revamping our YouTube channel. We’re bringing all the best content including Gary here today. So so awesome. All right. Did everyone have a great day have a great rest of your week and we will see you at the seven figure seller summit Thank you Gary

Gary: thank you Amy bye everyone