Personally delivered to you by Steve Lindhorst, author of
"Selling on 'the River', "The Niche Book", and
"Amazon - The Quick & Dirty Guide."
As you know, I like to try things before I recommend them to you. When I started using Fulfillment by Amazon, my business drastically increased, and I shared it with you. About a month ago, I found something else that has caused a jump in my Amazon sales. This month has been the best ever for me on Amazon. If you'd like to know part of the reason why, and how you can increase sales too...read on.
In This Issue
- Amazon's FBA Program - Can it Get Any Easier? YES!
- What Goes with Pizza? Try this Pre-Loaded Home Brew Website
- How to Get Better Results from Customer Service
- Why are you in business?
1. Amazon's FBA Program - Can it Get Any Easier? YES!
When I began using Amazon's FBA program, I was instantly taken with it. My sales jumped, my profits increased, and I was able to spend time shopping for more things to sell instead of packing and shipping orders. In fact, I bought so much that I would occasionally bury myself with:
- sorting
- listing
- stickering
- packing
- and shipping boxes full of items to the Amazon fulfillment center.
It began to take a lot of time. Too much time in fact.
I knew I could sell more, but I wasn't sure I could handle more of the sorting, packing, etc. Plus, I would upload in bulk using my AsellerTool scanner, but sometimes I was waiting as much as an hour for the items to appear in my inventory! A few times, that delay caused me to miss the UPS truck. The result was my shipment to the fulfillment center arrived on a Monday rather than a Friday - delaying sales.
Then I found FBAPower. This third-party tool solves nearly all of the problems I mentioned above. Since Amazon opened up to third party sellers, and then introduced Fulfillment by Amazon, you just need to set things up, and "feed" your Amazon account with items. Amazon and FBA are doing the selling and shipping. You have to find good products and get them to your FBA account. The faster you can send them in the better. FBAPower claims you can "feed" your Amazon account at a rate ten times faster than any other listing method!
I have personally used FBAPower for the past month. From actual experience, I can say it is a game-changer for me. The "ten times faster" claim is true. I can wholeheartedly recommend it. Besides that, I've gotten to know a couple of the guys behind the site - and they are great. They are open to suggestions, and they are constantly looking at ways to make it even better. They have some things coming up that will make some real waves in the industry (I'm sworn to secrecy so you'll have to wait).
You won't see me too excited about products or services very often. But this is a good one, and the guys behind it are solid, decent people, who also sell regularly on Amazon just like us.
SPECIAL OFFER for Readers of this Newsletter: I asked Chris, one of the brains behind FBAPower if I could offer my readers a special deal. He generously offered to let me double the free trial period from two weeks to a full 30 days! There is too much for me to do the product justice here, so I suggest you view the videos on the site and get a 30 day free trial of FBA Power.
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2. Great with Pizza! Pre-Loaded Home Brew Niche Website
"Brewers enjoy working to make beer as much as drinking beer instead of working."
-Harold Rudolph
Last month, I showed you a WordPress golfing website, pre-loaded with articles, and affiliate products. Once installed, all you had to do was add your affiliate IDs and promote it to begin getting visitors and hopefully start building some affiliate income too.
Several people snapped up that package, and as promised, I cut off sales to avoid over-saturating that niche. (Which was hard to do - since it was still selling.) I received several emails for more niche sites, on different topics. So I've picked the "home brewing" niche for this month.
One qualification I look for in a niche market is passion. I am an occasional home-brewer myself. I've made my own beer, and recently I made five gallons of incredibly good (if I do say so myself) hard apple cider. If you want to see passion about a topic, visit the home brewing forums online. Believe me, there are some people out there that are very serious about their home made beer.
"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."
-Benjamin Franklin
The American Homebrewers Association says that there are over 750,000 home brewers in the U.S. Homebrewing was federally legalized in 1978 for the first time since prohibition made it illegal in 1919.
Why do people want to brew their own beer? Two reasons stand out. The first is that they like the creative and artistic aspects of homebrewing. Creating a well crafted beer at home is much like cooking a gourmet meal at home. The second, is that they like the scientific aspects of brewing. The process of brewing beer involves chemistry and thermodynamics.
Another consideration when choosing a niche is the price level of the products you will sell or promote. While it is easy to get into home brewing, it can be an addictive hobby (no pun intended). It seems brewers are always looking for newer and better equipment. So the potential for sales is good. Passion + high-priced products = more potential for profit for you.
It's no secret that WordPress is a great platform for niche websites. Once you learn to use WordPress, you can create really powerful sites, that can each earn a little money every month.
As with last month's golf site, this is an entire website with graphics, some articles, and ads built in. The designer made it very easy to add your own affiliate IDs to the site. If you've always wanted to have a nice-looking niche site, but didn't know how to put it together, this is for you.
It's also completely customizable. You can add articles, move things around, change the ads, add products - whatever you want. You own it completely. So while other people may buy the same package, your customizations will make yours unique. In fact, I highly recommend that you use this site as a "starter-kit," and then grow it yourself from there.
It's a professionally designed site that is dedicated to home brewing - which you likely know is an very profitable niche. This package comes with a Home Beer Brew blog /website. It's preloaded with content, a customized theme, necessary plugins and more. It is ready to go, simply plug in your affiliate ID, upload and it's ready to crank out some sales for you. Including 20 quality text posts!
I set up a demo site - totally on my own - in less than 30 minutes (once I carefully followed the instructions). It comes with a review site as well, which you can use if you wish. I just set up the blog - check out the demo site here.
Included in the package is a golf information blog / website and a golfing product review web site. I used them together, but you could even get a domain for each part for twice the traffic and selling power. The blog is preloaded with content, niche theme, plug-ins and more. The review site is ready to go, simply plug in your affiliate ID, upload and it's ready to crank out some sales for you.
Site Features:
1. Pre-loaded with 10 quality SEO Optimized Text posts, including Images.
2. Ready-to-go Adsense Ad Spots (2)
3. Ready-to-go ClickBank Ad Spots (2)
4. PSD images so you can brand it totally as your own
5. Quality Custom Home Brew Blog Theme
6. Everything is included, even the WordPress files (Ver 3.0).
7. Theme and Plug-ins preloaded, ready right out of the box
8. Simple 5 minute or less setup once you upload the files to your host
It also comes with over 41 Amazon category pages, with each product listed as a separate post, adding a large number of extra pages for the search engines to crawl! It is very easy to add your Amazon Affiliate ID, ClickBank ID, and AdSense publisher information. The products come pre-loaded for you, they are ready to sell.
Once again, to avoid over-saturating this niche, I'm limiting the number of packages I sell. I'll let you know when it's about to close. Judging from last time, it won't be long...
I found similar pre-built sites selling for between $49 and $95 elsewhere. I'm going to offer this package, with resale rights for just $27 to my readers.
Download the package now - This offer sold out September 2, 2010
Everything you need is in this package, once you get it, you'll need to open it and find the Blog and Review Site Installation Guide.pdf and follow the instructions carefully. I believe anyone can do this, but obviously the more experience you have with WordPress the easier it will be. I pretended to be a complete newbie, followed the directions very carefully, and the whole thing went very smoothly.
"When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading."
-Henny Youngman
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3. How to Get Better Results from Customer Service
Have you ever had a problem with an online account, and found yourself stuck between giving up - or attempting to deal with (God forbid) Customer Service? (Cue the dramatic music)
When I worked for eBay, it was amazing to listen to people explain their problem, and then guess as to why it was happening. It was common for people to think they had been singled out personally for some reason, and some evil eBay minion had tinkered with their account to cause them to lose an auction, or pay special fees. The fact is, when you're dealing with a big site like eBay or Amazon, you're dealing with a gigantic computer. When people guess as to what is happening, they make it very hard for customer service to help them. It "muddies" the waters.
Occasionally I get emails from people asking me to help them with an Amazon or eBay account problem. When I can help, I do. Recently, I helped a reader get something changed on his Amazon account. It was something that wasn't possible to do fix through the normal account page. He got frustrated and gave up, assuming that Amazon would be inflexible, and wanting to just avoid the whole customer service hassle.
By reaching out to a friend on the "inside" I was able to get help for this person. (In case you are wondering, I have zero pull with either Amazon or eBay - please don't flood me with requests for help...)
The point of this is, I got some good advice from my inside contact.
He should have been able to get this help himself by contacting seller support and explaining. That’s who ultimately fixed it for him anyway.
Here are her simple tips for getting better customer service:
- Be precise about what you are trying to accomplish
- Do not try to guess at what is happening or what can/should happen (often sets the conversation in the wrong direction)
- Keep contacts to a single subject at a time if possible
She has recommended these points for years since it usually gets the best results. For Amazon, if you use the Click-to-Call feature, you can talk it through with a real human if that is easier than email.
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4. Why are you in business?
If you said, "to make money" I would agree with you. It amazes me to hear people complain when businesses such as eBay or Amazon charge fees for their services. When I lived in New York City, I actually overheard a customer complain, "Gheez! It's like they're only in this for the money!" Wow. Really?
That rant aside - consider this situation: Your business is in a slump. You aren't making any money. Maybe it's just a short slump, but you're dead in the water. Your costs continue. Would you stick to your guns, keep your prices as they are, and hope for more? Or would you hustle? Would you even cut a deal just to get something coming in?
Recently, I was running errands and getting my car ready for a weekend trip. I needed an oil change, and a car wash. As I drove past the best hand car wash in town, I noticed that they had an early-bird special for about $10. The place was completely empty, and several employees were standing around waiting for business. The problem was, I was about ten minutes past the early-bird deadline. So the price jumped back to the normal $17.
Seeing that they had zero business, I had to stop and ask...
I went in and asked if I could still get the early-bird price. You can guess what the manager said. She hemmed and hawed, and then said no.
I kindly pointed out that the workers had nothing to do - but she chose no business, over some business. In fact, just ten minutes earlier and she would have been happy to get the sale. What are people thinking? After all, they were paying the guys outside and there wasn't a single car in the place. Plus, would you be more likely to get your car washed at an establishment that's busy? or one that is empty? If someone sees my car there, maybe they'll have an idea to come in and get a wash too.
How do they know I wouldn't have purchased some add-on service like a wax job or a detail? Or maybe one of those pine-scented air fresheners?
Maybe she didn't have the power to make that decision. Who knows? It's simple though really, all real businesses have cash flow. If the cash isn't flowing in - it's flowing out!
If you're doing business, ultimately you're trying to make money. If you have employees, give at least one of them the authority to make a deal. Imagine how different I would feel about that place if they'd said without hesitation, "yep, drive right up - we'll give you the special price this time since we're not busy!" I like to give my business to people who try to earn it.
In your business, let people know you're hungry for the sale. Reach out to them when you can. Build goodwill with them, and they will come back. Customers are flexible - they have choices. If your business is in-flexible - potential customers will figure it out, and they won't choose you.
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Thanks for reading!
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
No flambuyoant or mindnumbing comment for me to add here.
I lied.
Want to ty for the info u share and I find this is one of those salient ecommerce commandments that no businessperson can ever hear to many reinforcements about and is written to register with us all.
Overloaded myself or would jump into your barrell of homebrew niche offers. Defintely “hot” topic in Indianapolis area and see it as good opportunity for anyone wanting to “dip their toes into internet marketing” at a tremendous price offering. Seems a good deed to forward this into a newbie forum so going to do so.
Steve,
If you had come by our house my youngest son would have doneit all for $9 (well $10 with $1 commission going to dad!) -on demand.
I used to sell records & CDs in a record store but now sell online, on eBay and Amazon amongst other places, and I learned, early on, that there is nothing to beat good personal inter-action with customers who, after all, are the ones who pay your wages. Often I could charge higher prices if I gave the care and attention most people crave. So often I found that it is not the price you charge BUT the service you give, that makes the difference.
Sometimes this is hard to translate in an online world where everything can seem to get so impersonal so I make sure I send a hand-signed note in each parcel (can I still do that with FBA I wonder?) and I uss real stamps instead of a franked meter mark.
ALSO we live in an online world where it is unusual to get any response back from customers (good feedback is great but how about an individual email saying thanks! We, sellers, are only human. Well some of us are!)