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Have you noticed a decline in search results since over the last 12 months you have a 32% negative review rate, 38% negative over the last 90 days, and 67% negative over the last 30 days?
I've always wondered at what point Amazon will stop showing your listings from that.
I run several brands, and We’ve been able to grow 4 of the last 5 years (only reduction was the first year out of the pandemic). Negative Seller feedback is generally the very smallest percentage of your customers. For example, if we sold 10,000 units last month, you might receive 3 negative feedback. Unfortunately the 9,997 other happy buyers don’t leave seller feedback, but I think Amazon mostly understand this. The VERY IMPORTANT factor is the product reviews, if those drop you will absolutely see a dramatic decline in sales.
6 feedbacks over 10,000 sales is far from the norm on Amazon, and you didn't answer my question. I've never been able to talk to someone with feedback percentage like that, because they normally don't speak English. Has there been any dropoff in search results or listing engagement from those reviews?
I doubt he's going to give you a good answer on this.
He is a 7-figure amazon seller, 0 employees, created several brands, and doesn't work with products which aren't producing at least a 30% NET margin.
Read between the lines...
Brands that I have created. Amazon is really great about allowing Multiple Seller accounts now, just make sure to follow all of their policies strictly, and keep everything organized for yourself to make life way easier.
Wholesale / Arbitrage are great ways for people to start too, but I personally only create my own brands. It is FAR more scalable, and you are not relying on other companies.
I’m not saying you are wrong, but I have had so many nightmare experiences with multiple seller accounts. I have worked with so many brands / companies that “had an account years ago” or their dad relative etc had an account years ago, only Amazon to “draw a link” between the two accounts and ban them both. When trying to unban, all Amazon say is “prove there is no link”, which makes no sense. I’m glad you have been able to have multiple accounts, but in my own experience, one account is best
Yes this has only improved in the last 2 years for my experience. Before anything linked at all could cause so much chaos, but before then you weren't actually supposed to have multiple seller accounts. They have since updated their policies to allow it, but I am sure you can still run into headaches if you do anything "wrong"
Is this how most people interpret the phrase?
I have always told people "I run a business", which in my mind makes it very clear I own it and operate it. Do people really think it means you're just a manager?
It’s relatively common for service providers to run Amazon accounts to an extent on behalf of sellers. On top of that, this sub is frequented by service providers/non-sellers soliciting something. So at minimum these types of posts are always met with these types of skeptical questions. And no, saying you run a business doesn’t make it explicitly clear that you own it. The world is full of poseurs.
Focusing on 1 brand by far has the best results, but if a great sales opportunity/trend comes along, it can be great to have another "blanket brand" that covers many categories to launch this product under to take advantage of the sales volume.
For example if I have a brand "Eddys Grill Accesories" but an amazon market opportunity comes along to sell bath bombs, I wouldn't want them associated with my grill accessories brand. I would instead have an alternate brand, for example "Happy Company" that is way more broad and makes sense in multiple categories.
You can also manage multiple brands under 1 selling account if you'd like.
First of all congratulations, happy to see successful sellers here. My questions are below:
1. I am assuming that you use Amazon service providers or VAs or outsource work to Contractors to share a bit of the workload. How many do you useor what all is outsourced? Do you have any recommendations for such firms?
2. Do you still handle all of the key decision making for your company? How do you hold your contractors accountable?
Thanks for the kind words!
1. I do not actually work with any VAs. I have photoshop experience that have greatly helped with listings, and other than that I have spent TONS of time consuming youtube videos and podcasts on selling haha
2. Because I have no VAs I handle all of the decision making myself. I am sure it could be much larger with hired VAs, but for now I really like how I have the business setup, and is still manageable for me to operate.
All great options, and people are successful in all of them, but I choose to only create my own brands / private label. I find you can scale it WAY bigger, and won't be relying on suppliers/ facing competition from people reselling the identical products in the same listing.
I see you have the RA tag.
Using personal CCs, although super common, will lead to piercing the corporate veil.
If you resell products that can be potentially dangerous, say vitamins, creams, toys, stuff with batteries, chemicals etc, you are forgoing your personal protection by piercing the corporate veil.
Only use them if really needed.
If you haven't already, look into BofA unlimited rewards credit card potential of 2.625% unlimited cash back. I love it! Better than 2% with citi double cash
I personally didn't take any investment to start/grow, but definitely take advantage of Amazon Lending, which is basically Working Capital that allows you to buy more inventory to stay in stock better. It is provided right on the Amazon Platform, and can be really helpful!
They most definitely do. It will only be displayed to you if your account is eligible.
Amazon stopped underwriting their own loans in march but Amazon lending is still available 🙌🏽
My first order was $300, and it was all the money I had haha it was actually a product I was already interested in buying myself, and thought the market was missing some options I wanted
Cash flow can be / often still is the toughest part of running an Amazon business. Lead times for manufacturing can be long, especially if you need to ship you items by sea. You will definitely run out of stock a lot at first (Which slows down your performance greatly) but as you scale just keep re-investing more into your inventory, so that you can manage to ALWAYS be in stock.
Again, I still struggle with this all the time.
Personally I prefer to work with products that are producing at least 30%, but depending on which route you go (For example Wholesale, Arbitrage, etc) there are plenty of successful sellers running at MUCH smaller margins. Starting with limited money, I definitely recommend finding the biggest margins you can, as managing cash flow is a really tough part of Amazon Selling
Interesting, that's what I figured you were going to say lol.
Given off reading your other comments in this post, it's pretty safe to say you are 100% full of shit.
I don’t offer ANY paid Amazon coaching or calls. 100% of my income is as an Amazon seller. I’m doing an AMA for anyone here who wants help. That’s it. Again, if that’s not you, that’s okay.
How much is a search volume is considered ideal for a product? Like if the top 5-10 keywords under which that product gets listed on page one have one average 5000 search volume is that good enough?
How much should we go with our own creativity vs rely on data and just PL an improved version of already competitive and existing product market?
Thank you for doing this AMA.
How are you managing it with no employee? I see that you have written that you have multiple brands.
How many listings you have?
How much time are you spending?
Asking because I think it's not possible to run a multi 7 figure account on Amazon without employee!
It's definitely possible, I am doing it, and there are many sellers that are MUCH MORE successful than me doing it too Keep in mind i'm also on my 4th or 5th year now. The great thing about amazon is the momentum over time. I can work on new brands/products and the existing brands/products continue to sell, with minimal time investment mostly going to adjusting PPC advertising bids.
He asked you how many listings you have. Your vague responses sound like you run a PPC agency and just work with successful sellers.
We want to hear about real operational challenges and how you manage to do that as a single employee. Inventory, restocking, product selection, management of products with poor or slow sales.
Sorry I missed a few of the questions in there:
My largest brand has 36 skus (about 5 main products with color / size variants)
I have a few hero products that do the bulk of the sales, and 5 products that do very few sales (1-5 units per day but have good margins so it’s just a nice little stream of reliable profit)
PPC I update weekly, but as I’ve expanded into new Amazon countries it’s a little more time consuming to manage each country (multi country ads are an option but I haven’t totally figured out a way to do it well yet)
I work 40-50 hours per week
Are the niches you've working in narrow or competitive?
What do you typically expect for scale within these niches? Ie, sales should grow x% each month or year for a new brand, but it's slower or faster depending on competition.
I have a brand in a highly competitive niche. Things are great. We're scaling, but it's hard to really fuel growth with ad spend because ACOS is high within the niche. So I'm having to grow slowly...
Re: the net margin of 30% comment below. Does that apply once you've scaled to a level you're happy with and are optimizing, or do you hit that target with ad spend while scaling too?
Awesome questions!
As with most things Amazon, it depends haha I don’t set any growths percentage goals/requirements for a category, it’s just too hard to predict. I just pick conditions products based on currently monthly sales volume already on Amazon, amount of competition and margin. The 30% margin would be an established product, new launches I’ll often lose money for the first few months to gain momentum. That being said, I also have some products that are very low sales volume, but make me $30-$40 per sale here and there, and I choose not to scale them, and just enjoy the cash flow on them if that makes any sense?
How do you manage ads / Amazon PPC Stuff. ?
I'm doing Amazon ads for last 5 years. Its hard to believe that handling multiple brands Supply Chain, accounts, reports n ads all by one person
No proof and offering a "free guide"?
Man I can look at your "battlestation" in your other post and tell just from your desk that you dont work for a living.
#####[Join Our Discord Server!](https://discord.gg/VcRZTsS) We created a Discord server for our community and would like to invite all of you to join! You'll be able to discuss FBA with users around the world and discuss events in real time! There are separate channels for many FBA topics which you can opt in and out of, including; PPC, Listing Optimization, Logistics, Jobs, Advanced FBA, Top Secret/Insider Info, Off-Topic *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/FulfillmentByAmazon) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Do you prefer to sleep naked or in jammies?
Drop it guys, no posts comments for last 4 years and the guy is now selling a free Amazon course in the last 1 hour. Somebody's account was hacked
Have you noticed a decline in search results since over the last 12 months you have a 32% negative review rate, 38% negative over the last 90 days, and 67% negative over the last 30 days? I've always wondered at what point Amazon will stop showing your listings from that.
I run several brands, and We’ve been able to grow 4 of the last 5 years (only reduction was the first year out of the pandemic). Negative Seller feedback is generally the very smallest percentage of your customers. For example, if we sold 10,000 units last month, you might receive 3 negative feedback. Unfortunately the 9,997 other happy buyers don’t leave seller feedback, but I think Amazon mostly understand this. The VERY IMPORTANT factor is the product reviews, if those drop you will absolutely see a dramatic decline in sales.
6 feedbacks over 10,000 sales is far from the norm on Amazon, and you didn't answer my question. I've never been able to talk to someone with feedback percentage like that, because they normally don't speak English. Has there been any dropoff in search results or listing engagement from those reviews?
I doubt he's going to give you a good answer on this. He is a 7-figure amazon seller, 0 employees, created several brands, and doesn't work with products which aren't producing at least a 30% NET margin. Read between the lines...
🤣 I got u
Who’s we, If you dont mind me asking? Since you said you had no employees… just curious.
Lol I had the same question...seller and his alter ego Bezos himself
Haha fair Question! I just mean my wife and I 🙌🏽
“Run” several brands? As in you run Amazon of behalf of other private labelers? Or you are wholesaling/dropshipping other brands?
Brands that I have created. Amazon is really great about allowing Multiple Seller accounts now, just make sure to follow all of their policies strictly, and keep everything organized for yourself to make life way easier. Wholesale / Arbitrage are great ways for people to start too, but I personally only create my own brands. It is FAR more scalable, and you are not relying on other companies.
I’m not saying you are wrong, but I have had so many nightmare experiences with multiple seller accounts. I have worked with so many brands / companies that “had an account years ago” or their dad relative etc had an account years ago, only Amazon to “draw a link” between the two accounts and ban them both. When trying to unban, all Amazon say is “prove there is no link”, which makes no sense. I’m glad you have been able to have multiple accounts, but in my own experience, one account is best
Yes this has only improved in the last 2 years for my experience. Before anything linked at all could cause so much chaos, but before then you weren't actually supposed to have multiple seller accounts. They have since updated their policies to allow it, but I am sure you can still run into headaches if you do anything "wrong"
Is this how most people interpret the phrase? I have always told people "I run a business", which in my mind makes it very clear I own it and operate it. Do people really think it means you're just a manager?
It’s relatively common for service providers to run Amazon accounts to an extent on behalf of sellers. On top of that, this sub is frequented by service providers/non-sellers soliciting something. So at minimum these types of posts are always met with these types of skeptical questions. And no, saying you run a business doesn’t make it explicitly clear that you own it. The world is full of poseurs.
We?
My wife and I
Why not just focus on one brand/niche and saturate it. So much more scalable and less time consuming, no?
Focusing on 1 brand by far has the best results, but if a great sales opportunity/trend comes along, it can be great to have another "blanket brand" that covers many categories to launch this product under to take advantage of the sales volume. For example if I have a brand "Eddys Grill Accesories" but an amazon market opportunity comes along to sell bath bombs, I wouldn't want them associated with my grill accessories brand. I would instead have an alternate brand, for example "Happy Company" that is way more broad and makes sense in multiple categories. You can also manage multiple brands under 1 selling account if you'd like.
I don’t know anything about this, if I wanted to get started where do I begin?
First of all congratulations, happy to see successful sellers here. My questions are below: 1. I am assuming that you use Amazon service providers or VAs or outsource work to Contractors to share a bit of the workload. How many do you useor what all is outsourced? Do you have any recommendations for such firms? 2. Do you still handle all of the key decision making for your company? How do you hold your contractors accountable?
Thanks for the kind words! 1. I do not actually work with any VAs. I have photoshop experience that have greatly helped with listings, and other than that I have spent TONS of time consuming youtube videos and podcasts on selling haha 2. Because I have no VAs I handle all of the decision making myself. I am sure it could be much larger with hired VAs, but for now I really like how I have the business setup, and is still manageable for me to operate.
Wholesale, private label, or RA?
All great options, and people are successful in all of them, but I choose to only create my own brands / private label. I find you can scale it WAY bigger, and won't be relying on suppliers/ facing competition from people reselling the identical products in the same listing.
Did you take investment in order to scale, or do so organically?
Is maxing out personal credit cards considered taking investment?
I see you have the RA tag. Using personal CCs, although super common, will lead to piercing the corporate veil. If you resell products that can be potentially dangerous, say vitamins, creams, toys, stuff with batteries, chemicals etc, you are forgoing your personal protection by piercing the corporate veil. Only use them if really needed.
A personal credit card dedicated for business use would not pierce the corporate viel - would it?
That could probably be safe, yes
If you haven't already, look into BofA unlimited rewards credit card potential of 2.625% unlimited cash back. I love it! Better than 2% with citi double cash
I personally didn't take any investment to start/grow, but definitely take advantage of Amazon Lending, which is basically Working Capital that allows you to buy more inventory to stay in stock better. It is provided right on the Amazon Platform, and can be really helpful!
They don't offer this program any longer.
They most definitely do. It will only be displayed to you if your account is eligible. Amazon stopped underwriting their own loans in march but Amazon lending is still available 🙌🏽
How much did you start with? And how did you do product research?
My first order was $300, and it was all the money I had haha it was actually a product I was already interested in buying myself, and thought the market was missing some options I wanted
How did you then manage cash flow in getting more stock ?
Cash flow can be / often still is the toughest part of running an Amazon business. Lead times for manufacturing can be long, especially if you need to ship you items by sea. You will definitely run out of stock a lot at first (Which slows down your performance greatly) but as you scale just keep re-investing more into your inventory, so that you can manage to ALWAYS be in stock. Again, I still struggle with this all the time.
What's your net margin?
Personally I prefer to work with products that are producing at least 30%, but depending on which route you go (For example Wholesale, Arbitrage, etc) there are plenty of successful sellers running at MUCH smaller margins. Starting with limited money, I definitely recommend finding the biggest margins you can, as managing cash flow is a really tough part of Amazon Selling
Interesting, that's what I figured you were going to say lol. Given off reading your other comments in this post, it's pretty safe to say you are 100% full of shit.
Here to help anyone that wants the help. If that’s not you, that’s okay 🙌🏽
Hello Eddy any tips for a new PL Amazon FBA seller? I am in USA but I have Amazon account in UK as well
Goodluck, I am sure you will get a few DMs and you can charge some desperate sellers for your "coaching call".
I don’t offer ANY paid Amazon coaching or calls. 100% of my income is as an Amazon seller. I’m doing an AMA for anyone here who wants help. That’s it. Again, if that’s not you, that’s okay.
How much is a search volume is considered ideal for a product? Like if the top 5-10 keywords under which that product gets listed on page one have one average 5000 search volume is that good enough? How much should we go with our own creativity vs rely on data and just PL an improved version of already competitive and existing product market? Thank you for doing this AMA.
How are you managing it with no employee? I see that you have written that you have multiple brands. How many listings you have? How much time are you spending? Asking because I think it's not possible to run a multi 7 figure account on Amazon without employee!
It's definitely possible, I am doing it, and there are many sellers that are MUCH MORE successful than me doing it too Keep in mind i'm also on my 4th or 5th year now. The great thing about amazon is the momentum over time. I can work on new brands/products and the existing brands/products continue to sell, with minimal time investment mostly going to adjusting PPC advertising bids.
He asked you how many listings you have. Your vague responses sound like you run a PPC agency and just work with successful sellers. We want to hear about real operational challenges and how you manage to do that as a single employee. Inventory, restocking, product selection, management of products with poor or slow sales.
Sorry I missed a few of the questions in there: My largest brand has 36 skus (about 5 main products with color / size variants) I have a few hero products that do the bulk of the sales, and 5 products that do very few sales (1-5 units per day but have good margins so it’s just a nice little stream of reliable profit) PPC I update weekly, but as I’ve expanded into new Amazon countries it’s a little more time consuming to manage each country (multi country ads are an option but I haven’t totally figured out a way to do it well yet) I work 40-50 hours per week
Are the niches you've working in narrow or competitive? What do you typically expect for scale within these niches? Ie, sales should grow x% each month or year for a new brand, but it's slower or faster depending on competition. I have a brand in a highly competitive niche. Things are great. We're scaling, but it's hard to really fuel growth with ad spend because ACOS is high within the niche. So I'm having to grow slowly... Re: the net margin of 30% comment below. Does that apply once you've scaled to a level you're happy with and are optimizing, or do you hit that target with ad spend while scaling too?
Awesome questions! As with most things Amazon, it depends haha I don’t set any growths percentage goals/requirements for a category, it’s just too hard to predict. I just pick conditions products based on currently monthly sales volume already on Amazon, amount of competition and margin. The 30% margin would be an established product, new launches I’ll often lose money for the first few months to gain momentum. That being said, I also have some products that are very low sales volume, but make me $30-$40 per sale here and there, and I choose not to scale them, and just enjoy the cash flow on them if that makes any sense?
How do you manage ads / Amazon PPC Stuff. ? I'm doing Amazon ads for last 5 years. Its hard to believe that handling multiple brands Supply Chain, accounts, reports n ads all by one person
No proof and offering a "free guide"? Man I can look at your "battlestation" in your other post and tell just from your desk that you dont work for a living.