Serious Sellers Podcast: Learn How To Sell On Amazon FBA & Walmart

innovative strategies from Gulsen Berkin Cinar and Michelle McLean, who are back after five years to share their secrets. From capitalizing on Amazon influencer opportunities to selling seasonal products, they reveal methods where people are earning up to $70,000 a month with no investment. Join us as we explore the incredible journey of a family-run Amazon business that skyrocketed from modest beginnings to a seven-figure revenue before being sold. Gulsen shares the thrill of launching a new brand and expanding into platforms like Shopify and Walmart. Michelle, driven by her passion for seasonal products, recounts her success with Amazon products during Christmas, illustrating the excitement of spotting and profiting from trending items. Dive into the world of Amazon influencers and affiliates with Michelle's expert tips on maximizing commission potential by reviewing higher ticket items. Discover how you can earn substantial income through Helium 10’s affiliate program, even if you’re just starting out. We’ll also guide you on signing up for this lucrative opportunity and highlight the benefits, including lifetime recurring commissions and other rewards. Don't miss this episode, which is packed with actionable insights and real-life success stories designed to help you thrive in the e-commerce world. (Time Stamps) -  In episode 596 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, Gulsen, and Michelle discuss: 00:00 - Boss Ladies Making Money Online 03:09 - Amazon Influencer Affiliate Program 03:47 - Amazon Business Exit and Brand Scaling Success 10:23 - Influencer Program and Earning Commissions 14:17 - First Amazon Product Review Videos 20:08 - Product Sourcing and Market Research 22:48 - Amazon Affiliate and Reviewer Earning Potential 29:02 - Helium 10 Affiliate Earning Potential 32:47 - The Power of Consistent Growth 34:29 - Helium 10 Affiliate Discount Opportunities 38:01 - Affiliate Program Sign-Up and Benefits ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On Youtube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Bradley Sutton: Today we've got a couple of boss ladies on the show who haven't been in the podcast in five years and they're going to be talking about cool ways that they're making thousands of dollars in their spare time by being either an Amazon influencer or selling seasonal products, along with a way that some people with no investment are even being paid $70,000 a month from Helium 10. How cool is that? Pretty, I think. Important message, guys. On October 23rd, Amazon is changing the window for which you can look back and claim that they owe you reimbursements for lost and damaged products at FBA warehouses. It used to be 18 months, but now it's going down to only 2 months. So, if you have never used a reimbursement service or Refund Genie, now is the time. Last week, I ran Refund Genie on two different accounts and got a total of over $5,000 back for those sellers. And don't forget, unlike a lot of services out there, Helium 10 doesn't take any commission on what we get back. If we say you're owed ten thousand dollars and you get back ten thousand dollars from amazon, you keep ten thousand dollars with no commission to Helium 10 at all. Refund Genie is now available to anybody who has a Helium 10 Platinum Annual Plan or higher. So, to get an estimate about on how much money you could get back, go to h10.me/refundgenie. If you've never used a Helium 10 coupon, use the code SSP10 to save money if you need to upgrade to a Platinum Annual Plan.   Bradley Sutton: Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That's a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world, and we've got a couple of people here that are super, super old school here at Helium 10, including the one person, the only person who has been at the company here in United States side longer than me, and then another person who was one of my first hires here at Helium 10 just a couple months after I got started. So, Gulsen and Michelle, welcome back to the show.   Michelle: Hello   Gulsen: Hello   Michelle: wow, I feel so old.   Bradley Sutton: Well, hey, that's why I'm also I'm wearing the old school Helium 10 logo shirt here to kind of like reminisce about our old days, you know, way back then in the WeWork. Now I say welcome back to the show because there's been a huge gap since Michelle and Gulsen have been on the show the word now in episode I don't know like 580 something or 590 something. Their first time on the show was episode 86, way back in December of 2019. So, if you want to get a little bit more of their backstory, go ahead and see if you can find I don't even know if you can find such an old episode, but episode 86, where we had them and some of the other members of our crew all together on one episode. But I was like you know what? It's been years since you guys have come on and each of you have interesting things to talk about. So, let's go ahead and have you guys uh back on. So, first of all, um, let's start with uh, Gulsen. Now what about you? And you know you've since before you even worked at Helium 10. You know you've had like a family Amazon business. Um, ven offline, obviously you're my co-worker, but we've never really talked about that in a long time. Like, are you guys still selling on Amazon? You selling on other market? What have you guys been doing with that side of your things?   Gulsen: Yes, so you don't know this, but you know we were running that Amazon business with my husband and last year December we sold that one and the first call I received. Now my husband is building another brand.   Bradley Sutton: Well, hold on. I want to talk about that. I didn't know that you were right, I had brand and I want to talk about that. I didn't know that. You're right, I had no idea. So how did you find a buyer for the business? What was it like through an aggregator? Did you use a service or just networking?   Gulsen: Yeah, he was with a partner and um, he was always getting those questions like, um, if he ever likes to sell his shares and stuff, but at the time it was very good season to do that move last year December. So yeah, and it. You know it was very stressful and long journey for years but I'm so happy that we came to that ending and he took like a few weeks refresh and now he's on top of it another brand by himself right now.   Bradley Sutton: Okay, so what did he scale that brand to like? what was the peak yearly sales like approximately?   Gulsen: Yeah, so by the time he started it was about four hundred dollars per month.   Bradley Sutton: Four hundred thousand dollars ?   Gulsen: Four hundred Dollars.   Bradley Sutton: Four hundred. Oh, when he started, you said yeah, okay, I was like about to say well, who is buying an amazon business that grosses $400 a month, like good grief? Okay, that makes sense now. So that was when he started, and then he scaled it to what?   Gulsen: Yeah, the time he moved out that they were at monthly six figures.   Bradley Sutton: Oh wow. So definitely a seven-figure brand, oh yeah, that is pretty cool and then and then. So now he's starting from scratch or like something similar, or, and he's already launched, or he's just in the planning stage right now.   Gulsen: From scratch it's already launched and now, um, this time we just wanted to want it to be more on like brand side. We still use, of course, amazon and we will try to start selling on Walmart as well, but now we're just trying to be so heavy on Shopify, building the brand awareness, and then, of course, the goal is the goal again, selling it. But to me, you remember my Amazon account. I was so like a Grand Bazaar Amazon account. I still have it and still is my passion to find those seasonal items.   Bradley Sutton: But you're not still. Have you been off and on selling products on that account?   Gulsen: Yes, yes.   Bradley Sutton: Oh okay, I didn't know that. Okay, cool, but only seasonal.   Gulsen: Only seasonal and I know you don't really like it when you do Amazon for patient. But that account you saw that it's such a passionate account only the products I really like to spend my time on and not really that profitable, but still nice. And I feel like I still like to spend a lot of time on Black Box trying to find products and then search them on Alibaba, even if I'm not going to invest. I think it started to be like a habit for my life. And, yeah, the last time I found something it was a toy product. I never recommend anyone to, you know, join a toy business, but this one was crazy because, like it was selling on Amazon about like $26, the price to import and everything was about 450. So now it's just, you know, um, making my mind so busy like should I really launch a toy product? But it's so competitive and, yeah, I might be needing to pick your brain about it very soon.   Bradley Sutton: Okay, I thought you were saying you already did this. I was waiting for the results. This is what you're planning. What is something you've already done in the last year or so that really was a good experience? When you just found some random product and then it was able to sell during the season. Can you give an example?   Gulsen: Yeah, I can give you an example. What's so funny is I really like to look around a lot while shopping, like actual shopping, Like I'm touring the Costco, Sam's Club, these places and like Bluetooth Beanies. I don't know if you remember them.   Bradley Sutton: It's like you have a beanie, but then there's like headphones or something inside. Oh, okay.   Gulsen: Inside the beanie there were headphones and the first time I saw them like we were shopping on Sam's Club. The first time I saw them, we were shopping on Sam's Club and Charlie, my husband, he was telling me you know what? This product will go viral. And then we sourced it and, oh my God, it was such an amazing experience because that product really went viral.   Bradley Sutton: So, you sourced it, not to piggyback on the listing, but you made your own listing a brand new. You just found it in Alibaba. So how much did you sell of that product?   Gulsen: Yeah, during Christmas time we sold close to 1,000 units   Bradley Sutton: 1,000 units at what price?   Gulsen: I believe it was about $14,000, $14,000, $15,000.   Bradley Sutton: Okay, so a nice little five-figure a month there on one product or two.   Gulsen: yeah, it was amazing but, like I said, it was seasonal and now like I don't even think anyone is going to search for Bluetooth beanie, but we were one of the first listings on amazon selling that product.   Bradley Sutton: Nice so finding products at Sam’s Club in Costco. I just go there for like free samples and a dollar 50 hot dog and stuff. But now, now I know I need to start looking out for products. All right, let's switch to Michelle now. So, Michelle, you know, in the beginning at Helium 10 and the last time you were on the podcast you like, like your experience with Amazon was pretty much just interacting with Helium 10 and interacting with, interacting with our customers. But now you're not necessarily an Amazon private label seller. But tell us what you are now in that definitely has to do with the Amazon ecosystem.   Michelle: Yeah, of course you know really quick. I wanted to say how far back I've been, you know, just to give some clarity for people listening. When I first started Helium 10, my daughter was eight months. She's going to be seven years old in November. So, this just goes to show like how old I am.   Bradley Sutton: I don't need any reminders for that.   Michelle: Yeah, I was just thinking about that and I was like, oh my gosh, it's been almost six going on seven years, so that's insane.   Bradley Sutton: That's crazy, that's great. And then I remember how it was like your desk was like behind mine, so I need to check on what you're doing. I just like turn around, we're all in that little, we work there. And then I got to move to like this little, literally a closet. You know, the affiliate team office was like this little that used to be a storage closet and then it became my office.   Michelle: And then what? Six or been very exciting, and I honestly love building relationships and speaking with different people around the world. It's awesome. So now what I'm doing is I've learned and I've kind of just jumped on ships with the Amazon. Influencers program is something that you don't need to really invest money in. It's more of just investing your time and basically you are reviewing products and then when you review them, you upload them to Amazon and Amazon does all the work for you and you just earn commission off anyone that watches your video.   Bradley Sutton: How do you even find out about that people are doing that, because I think nowadays some more and more people know about it, but like I didn't really know about it until somebody like I don't know maybe I saw a video on it or something but how do you even know that this was something that people do?   Michelle: Yeah, it's actually really funny. So, I was just searching, looking for new influence affiliates to join Helium 10 and you know, the algorithm just picks up and all of a sudden, you're seeing like people selling you courses and it's like, hey, the Amazon review program. And I was like, what is this? So, I dived into it and I just started following and I was like you know what? I've never been one to just like jump and, you know, spend a lot of money on products, but this seems like something I can do. And I did it kind of just more of like as a test and, um, it was, yeah, I got like approved right away and then I did the second approval and I got approved in that and now it's just putting videos up on Amazon and the more videos you put there, the more commission you make. And you know it really just depends on the type of video you make as well, of course, the quality and everything. But it's really fun and I feel like for me being like a really busy full-time mom um, and you know, working full-time this is something that I can do, that I don't have to just like run a business. It's just more of yeah fun on the side.   Bradley Sutton: yeah, like even us, you know amazon sellers, like we all have families, like this is something, and maybe your daughter is a little bit too young still, but you know this is something, is something that you know you got like teenagers or even, um, you know, maybe preteens a little bit. You could almost have them like make some of these uh videos and it's like something super simple. Obviously, you know adult needs to set it all up, but it's not like rocket science where you have to be a pro influencer. Uh, you know, in order to make these review videos, a lot of them are just like kind of like unboxing and how you're using it right.   Michelle: Yeah, you know what Funny thing is? My daughter got her first brand deal.   Bradley Sutton: Oh well, okay. Well, maybe she is old enough, I guess. Okay, my bad.   Michelle: Yeah, so there's. There's Amazon sellers looking for people to or, you know, other people to review their product. And one was a mom who just came out with a kid's face wash and she was like hey, I saw your daughter on Instagram. I would love for her to review my product. My daughter is all about skincare because of YouTube and she absolutely loved it. She did it and I just got another email yesterday from another seller who saw her video on that listing asking if they can review her skincare product now and I'm like wait, she's starting to get all these deals, she's only six.   Bradley Sutton: Wow.   Michelle: It is really cool. Of course, you know you need to be in it as a parent, but it is really fun and I've seen a lot of married couples, even like a husband will have his own and then the wife has her own and they just capitalize on that extra income.   Bradley Sutton: Interesting. Now, what's the? I mean, there's a difference, necessarily, between like, almost anybody can sign up to be an Amazon affiliate but then to be an Amazon influencer. Do they still require that you have some kind of social media account that has X number of followers? And then, if so, like what is that requirement?   Michelle: Yeah, so that's a great question. So many people get confused between the Amazon Associates program and that is basically offsite commission. You have to have a website; you get the affiliate link and then you basically drive traffic from your website to Amazon with the Amazon reviewers’ program. That's onsite commission and you necessarily don't need a huge following on social media. You just need to have good engagement for the first two steps. So as long as you get engagement, you build your, your engagement, you sign up and you get approved, you don't even need to worry about that social platform anymore. It's just like building up that reviewer’s videos and then just letting Amazon do that for you.   Bradley Sutton: Okay, excellent, excellent. Now, um, what was the very first video that you did Like? What was it for? Do you remember what it was?   Michelle: Yeah, so, amazon. In order for you to get approved for the second step you actually need very first video that you did like what was it for? Do you remember what it was? Yeah, so amazon. In order for you to get approved for the second step, you actually need to submit three product review videos. So, it's not only one, it's three. So, I did a dog uh feeder, so it's basically a dog bowl but like it has a puzzle inside for your dogs, um, to slow their feeding. And then then I did a Spanish book, and then I did a I don't want to say dupe, but I did a smart watch that you know looks like a brand name like Apple, and that actually got approval. So that got me three. That got my first three approvals for the Amazon reviewers’ program.   Bradley Sutton: Your style of doing Amazon business, like why do you think this is kind of good? Like it's obviously not for the kind of person who's like trying to build up a brand and, you know, be able to exit like your husband did with his brand. But what kind of person is what your model is of? Like these seasonal products in here or there? Like are you even putting it on a brand registry or you're just doing generic brands? Or how are you doing these listings?   Gulsen: No, no brand. How are you doing these listings? No brand registry. And I think that what I'm doing is great for who is working like typical 9 to 5 that would like to get extra site income. And also, like you know, before working at Helium 10, I did supply chain my entire life, so I'm so close to those sourcing agencies or the places in like. I'm originally from Turkey. I know a lot of Turkish manufacturers. Plus, I have very good experience in Far East so it's so easy for me to source products. So, I feel like it is mixed for me. If you really like sourcing trying to find new people on the manufacturing end or sourcing end and if it's giving you pleasure, then that's great because then the money comes itself. But it's not something that you can quit working on your corporate and rely on those seasonal items.   Bradley Sutton: now, for example, that, what do you say? beanie, Bluetooth, Bluetooth, beanie, whatever it's called? Um, you know, you, you grossed I don't know fifteen thousand dollars, twenty thousand dollars or whatever from it. Yeah, was that all one order from the manufacturer and you only did one? And then, if so, like what was that initial investment? Like landed to amazon, like the price of the products and then the importation, and landed to Amazon, like, how much did you invest in that project?   Gulsen: It was like we created two orders the first order, it's like it was gone like in the very first month and a half, and then, since we foresee it, we had to place another order and we did the same quantity and I think we invested about maybe $7,000 in total.   Bradley Sutton: In the first order and both orders together.   Gulsen: The first order, like both orders together, could be around 14K, but it includes everything. Everything like it's includes about two thousand of those Bluetooth beanies and the import and the shipping. So, we had to act quick so we couldn't really do a vessel.   Bradley Sutton: Wait, the first order was 2,000 units   Gulsen: It was 1,000 and 1,000.   Bradley Sutton: Okay so you have, you sold all of them?   Gulsen: yeah, so the first.   Bradley Sutton: I thought you only sold 1000 units. You actually sold 2000 units.   Gulsen: it was during Christmas time. We sold about 1000 and that's why we were so high and excited. We ordered the second order and then those um the remainders. I think we have left about like 300 pieces left and then we started to get orders, maybe once a week and like bi-weekly.   Bradley Sutton: No, not so yeah you sold way more than like 20. You know like we're talking more like 20, 30 000, so seven thousand dollars to invest. And then are you just doing the regular private label ways to get on page one like, hey, I'm gonna run some PPC and try, I mean like that's how you did it.   Gulsen: Yeah, we were so lucky because we were one of the first listings, as I said, and organic, we were already on the page one for that Bluetooth beanie. But then of course you know how it goes Competition comes so crucially and we had to run PPC but still it wasn't that competitive because we were there at the beginning and we sent all inventory to FBA but then we had to take some inventory back and started to sell the rest as FBM.   Bradley Sutton: You should see me about those. I'll start shipping them for you. You can pay my kids to do that. Okay, so then I mean, that's fascinating. I don't know how I didn't know all of this stuff that you're doing. Yeah, you know what.   Gulsen: Funny enough. Actually, it's not about me, but again, like with my husband. Do you remember those fidget spinners?   Bradley Sutton: Yes, yes.   Gulsen: Yeah, he was also like one of the first listings with those fidget spinners on Amazon. Like I think he has a good sense of finding what will come to be a buy.   Bradley Sutton: Well, how did you and he validate that thing? Because you know like it's different when you're trying to be the first kind of like we were kind of like the first coffin shelf. You know there's not like a bunch of data where it's like oh, I know all the main competitors and what they're ranking for and stuff. So, what did you guys use to validate? Like, did you buy some from Costco and just put it up and do a test listing to see how it goes? Or how did you have the con? I mean, cause $7,000 is still $7,000. You know that's a lot of money. Like you got to have some kind of confidence that you're going to be successful. So, if you couldn't see other beanie uh, Bluetooth, Bluetooth beanies, people having confidence what numbers or what were you looking at that made you go ahead and pull the trigger on that order?   Gulsen: Yeah, the thing is I can source those products so quickly because of my connections. So, with that fidget spinner we didn't really do any drop shipping. We just found the manufacturer and I still doubt it was the manufacturer. I still feel like we were talking to a trader at that time. But we got the products in like in 10 days when we decided to go.   Bradley Sutton: Oh, no, the beanie, though that's the one I'm wondering. Yeah, the beanie, you saw it in Sam's Club. It's not like hey, let me go to. Oh, there's a nice product Sam's Club, let me go ahead and drop $7,000. I'm sure you must have done some kind of research or something to take a look.   Gulsen: Yeah, so, uh, what was really very surprising to me when you go to Alibaba or like, let's say, DHgate, and search for some products, you would see tons of manufacturer putting the same picture of the product and selling them. That time, when we check for the Bluetooth beanies, we only sold two, two manufacturers on Alibaba and at that time I was like wow, like this is amazing, because the manufacturers are not just saturating the market. Yes, so it was one of the insights for me. And the second one was it was I believe it was right before the Halloween and you know, like during Christmas times. It's amazing product that you can put in those stockings and not very expensive, but still, it would make your grandchildren so happy to have a gadget like that. It's great if you're like, if you do ski, snowboarding and stuff, you don't really worry about you. So, we believe in the product too.   Bradley Sutton: But was there a search volume at the time, like was anybody searching that at all in Helium 10? Or there wasn't even search volume for that keyword yet.   Gulsen: I don't remember that we saw a huge amount of search volume.   Bradley Sutton: interesting, all right. So, hey, like that's really getting ahead of the, you know, similar to like what we did with the wooden egg tray in project X, where there was nobody searching for wooden egg tray but we're like, hey, I think this is going to be a hot product. All right, that's very interesting, I like that method. Now going back to Michelle, um, let's say I start my, my um influencer account. Would you suggest the first thing to do which actually is me I've had, because, I don't know, I'm lazy, I guess, but like should is the first thing I should do is just go around my house and look at stuff that I bought from Amazon or that stuff that exists on Amazon and start making videos of those things? Is that like a good first step for somebody just getting started?   Michelle: yeah, so not a lot of people know this, but Amazon has it. Use your phone, the Amazon scanner app, and you can go around your house and scan anything and then you find stuff that are actually being sold on Amazon. And I do that. And when I first started, I did a lot of my higher ticket items. So, like my bed frame I got on that wasn't on Amazon and I checked and it was. I'm sorry I didn't get it from Amazon, but when I checked it was on Amazon and so I reviewed it. And then I reviewed like my sofa. My couch was there. I got my couch from an outlet and my couch was also on Amazon. So, I would say to focus on like your higher ticket items, but then also mix it up and do some mid-level, like $20, $30, $40, because those are what's going to give you commission. And if you start a lot of people focus on like really small items, like $10, $12, you're only going to see change. So, you want to have a mix of both and the more videos you bring in, the better. I would also say to look at your like how many influencer videos are there right? Like you don't want to review a product and there's so many review videos that you're not even going to be seen, so that's something else to look out for.   Bradley Sutton: Like what's the best opportunity? Like obvious, it's like, is it something that's selling really well, so that you know there's a lot of you know people getting on that page, and at the same time, maybe like there's not that many influencer videos on that page? Like, is that how you prioritize it? Like, let's say, you could do like 30 things and you're like, okay, how do I know which ones I should do first Because I can get the most money? Would that be what you're looking at, or is there other factors involved too?   Michelle: Yeah, so I try to see how many product listings there are. So, I'll give you an example. Like the smartwatch that I did, that was one of my like it's still actually selling really well and because there's multiple, actually there's only like 50 or 100 people buying it per month from what Amazon showed, but there's a lot of sellers that had it as well, and so I realized that people were watching my video and then they were going on to another listing and then they were like, okay, I really want to get this watch, and then they were just purchasing it. So that's one way. So, you also just want to make sure that there's demand for it, like people are buying it. Right, if you have a rug and you're going to review it and you go in and like there's bad reviews, it says from Amazon, this product is most likely going to get returned, probably not the best one you want to start with.   Bradley Sutton: My next question, uh, would be is just, you know, to give people an idea of the potential here? um, what are some success stories you've heard about, like how much money people are making? And then you, your exact example. You obviously work full-time for Helium 10, so it's not like you're just sitting in your house all day doing video I hope not, otherwise our boss might not be happy about that but you're just doing it here and there in your spare time. Since you already have a full-time job, how much are you grossing every month from this?   Michelle: Yeah, so Amazon's commission is uncapped. You can basically make as much. I just recently started, June, and I'm already about last month I made $600 and then all together it's probably about a thousand, but it hasn't even been a full three months. So, you know, with and I only have a hundred and like 60 videos on my Amazon storefront. So of course, the more videos I'm going to have, the more I'm going to be able to make. I I'm in a lot of Amazon reviewer groups and people make who've been there for like 12 months a year two years can make at least three to $6,000. So, like my goal is to put as many videos as possible and I'm trying to get to like 500 videos for Christmas, because I know that during Christmas time it's going to be really busy. So, I'm really excited to see if I can get at least up to two to three thousand dollars by Christmas in a month.   Bradley Sutton: How much time does it take you to make these videos? Because I know like they actually don't necessarily need like super crazy professional video production and seven different scenes and Steven Spielberg quality. But it's like you just use your cell phone, if I'm not mistaken, right, and then and then what program are using for like cut it up and then put some like captions, and is that basically it? So, what's the time constraint? And then, what are the tools you're using to, to, to put it all together?   Michelle: So that's a great question. Because I'm such a you know I'm busy, everything. I try not to put as much time into this and you really don't because people want to see reviews that are very authentic. They don't want to see like commercials or advertisements, they want to see real people making reviews. So, I just scan it. If I see that it's on Amazon, I will quickly get my water bottle, or if it's a product of a water bottle, quickly get it. Put my phone, place it so I can see myself in it and make a quick 30 to 45 second review video. Make sure the audio is good and I use CapCut. Capcut is free. You can also purchase it and I purchased it because you can enhance your audio, you can clean it up and you can also slice it up. So, in all, it takes me maybe like five minutes per video per product, because you get better as you go and then you just float.   Bradley Sutton: Awesome, awesome, okay, cool, I'm going to get my kids started on that then. Now let's switch gears and talk about what you guys do here, because this is another way that people can make money without having to invest too much money and that's being an affiliate. And so, let's just talk about the extreme, just to get people excited here. Some affiliates here at the company how much money are they grossing? How much money is Helium 10 paying them per month in additional things like cars and stuff like that? So just like get people excited about this subject.   Gulsen: It's really crazy, because some affiliates are making about $70,000 per month.   Bradley Sutton: From Helium 10? Okay, I might be in the wrong position here. What in the actual heck? I had no idea.   Gulsen: But it's not that, so we also pay for their cars.   Bradley Sutton: What are some cars that we're paying for people.   Gulsen: What I remember, we have like one, I believe, Tesla Model S and G-Wagon and a Mercedes, RV minibus and yeah, these are the ones.   Bradley Sutton: In addition, making tens of thousands, even up to 70,000, that okay. Now I think we have you got my attention already, like I didn't even know that we were at that level yet, and so okay. So, what about you know what? What are the ways that that that people are getting to that level? Obviously, no, we're not going to sit here and say, hey, anybody can just make $70,000 a month from Helium 10. But basically, how are they doing something like that? Either of you can answer this.   Gulsen: Yeah, it is. If you have an audience this is only what matters engaged audience you can be a very popular YouTuber, you can be running a course, you can be a great blogger, or you're just someone spreading the word about how to sell on Amazon and the software that's helping with it. Because we pay lifetime recurring commission 25% and on top of the commission we have extra rewards. I'd like Michelle to talk about them yeah.   Michelle: So I will say, some of our top affiliate, like producers, that we pay out high commission, it's because our program is so lucrative and, again, it's 25 lifetime commission. So, some of our affiliates have been here for three, four years and they're still making commission with us on top of the extra bonus program rewards that we're paying for their cars or we're paying for their restaurant dinners, like we pay for so many things. And I also want to clarify, like we don't only pay out top affiliates, like we have a bonus reward program that also pays our smaller guys, like if you're just starting out, we're actually going to update our program, so you're going to receive $500 just for bringing in 10 new subs.   Bradley Sutton: I think what you know, one thing that I want to double click on right there that you said is like the lifetime commission. So, theoretically, you know, let's say, I have this channel where I'm talking about Amazon, but, for whatever reason, I'm like you know what? YouTube shut me down. I no longer have a YouTube channel; I'm just going to stop this. But I had signed up 100 people to Helium 10. Let's just say it's the cheapest plan, so they're paying Helium 10. Those 100 people are paying Helium 10 100 times $100. Okay, all right. So hey, wait, wait, hold on, I'm going to. I'm about to do some advanced math here. So those customers are paying helium 10, $10,000 a month, but every month the affiliate is getting 25%, right? Yeah, so then that's a wait 0.25 times 10,000 is they're getting a check for $2,500 a month. But let's say, today my YouTube channel shut down and it shut down for a year, next year. Let's just say, if those hundred people are still paying Helium 10, they never even did anything, they didn't make one more video, they didn't like help these people at all. They're still getting a check for $2,500 a month, every month from now until infinity, as long as those members. So that that that's that. That that's what I think is really good about our, our system.   Bradley Sutton: Now, uh, Michelle, you know, we obviously talked about one side of the spectrum where it's big influencers or people who have this big course or big YouTube channel or something. Obviously, it's a no brainer to sign up, you know, to be an affiliate, because instantly they're probably going to start making tons of money just because they're going to be able to sign up people. But again, we're talking this episode is kind of like about making money without too much investment. What if I'm just an average Joe? Maybe I'm just an average Joe Helium 10 user out there I know Helium 10 well or I'm just listening to this podcast somehow and I don't have a YouTube channel. I don't have a big popular blog or, you know, Instagram, with a hundred thousand followers. What's a way that I can scale up? I mean, I can still be an affiliate even if I have nobody just at least get started. But how can I scale up my platform in order to start building up? How much Helium 10 is paying me?   Michelle: Yeah, so that's a really good question. I would say consistency, and that goes for everything that you do, right. If you are an average girl, like we've seen this. Like we have people sign up and they don't have like a big platform. However, like they're consistent with growing their audience, whether they you know what I decided I'm going to be a YouTuber. Now I'm going to start posting YouTube videos consistently and on top of that, I'm going to start posting Helium 10 demos, because I am a Helium 10 wizard, so why not share my knowledge? Or I'm going to start my own community on Facebook. Um, and they're consistent with growing their audience. They can eventually start growing commission, because all it takes is one person to get inspired and sign up for Helium 10 with your affiliate link and then, all of a sudden, it's three months in, you're like 10, 15, 20. And you're already, like you said, grossing like $2,500. And you haven't even done much. And you know, like I said, it's really about consistency and it's really fun, because I enjoy speaking with a lot of these smaller affiliates and encouraging them and then seeing their growth. It's insane.   Bradley Sutton: Maybe I don't even have plans for making a community, but I mean, I guess theoretically, hey, I'm in, I'm in Facebook groups or uh, I post in in in X, uh, you know, like threads about, you know, formerly Twitter and as far as Amazon, I'm on Reddit and stuff like I could just share the coupon code here and there when people talk about it, and even without either, like being an influencer, I could be making commission. I just sign up. One person sees that code. You know that maybe my Reddit post is indexed by Google and then somehow somebody lands on it and I never even touched that person or had anything to do with them. They thought they use my code. I've got that revenue for life. So that's, that's something guys out there. You know you don't have to be some big influencer. If you're just a regular Helium 10 user and you know you have friends interested in Helium 10, give them a discount. You know, get a discount code Affiliates get discount codes that other people can't get and you're helping your friend out and now you're going to you know what.   Michelle: Let me just join, for instance we just had a webinar and Riley was in it and he taught, talked all about q4 and how to you know create a good listing for q4, how to prepare. That was a webinar and now they have the opportunity to share an affiliate link with their friends or family there and who, anyone else that they know who's selling on Amazon. And if that person decides like hey, this was a really great webinar, I, I really need Helium 10 now because I want to make sure my listing is great, like, oh, now there's a coupon code attached, so just like that, just by sharing a resource and how Helium 10 can help, they can easily earn and make money with it.   Bradley Sutton: that's a good point because it's not like, oh, I need to be a Helium 10 expert or an Amazon expert. If you've got the audience, like actual evangelists like myself, Carrie, Shivali, we'll go on the channel like, hey, we'll do a video and you don't even need to bring the expertise, because we've got it and you just provide the audience. And then I wish I need to arrange something. These affiliates are making so much money and I'm the one who's doing these videos and I'm not seeing any part of this. Something doesn't feel fair there. But anyways, take advantage of it guys. Take advantage of it. I'm not getting any money, but I'll be supporting there. Gulsen. Anything else to say about our affiliate program?   Gulsen: Yeah, I think our affiliate program is offering money and also offering a bunch of information and the trends. So, we're like at Helium 10, we are not just like, hey, promote us and get the commission. We are helping a lot for our affiliates to grow. So, some real-life experiences like one of our affiliate’s accounts get hacked and he was having hard time dealing with Google so we were there for him and we helped him to get his account back. Or I was on a call with one of our affiliates chief marketing officers because he was curious about the latest trends and I was giving him my two cents about what they should be else doing to boost their reach, like getting more students.   Bradley Sutton: Haven't some like giving you access to like their YouTube channel and you go in there and optimize. Like you're literally in their YouTube and fixing for them and stuff like that.   Gulsen: I didn't want to talk about that one, but yes, this happened as well. Yeah, so, like Helium 10 is the only platform where you have your dedicated account manager. We are not a platform like your account is managed by a team of VAs or you're just talking to some AI generated chat box, so it's like you work with us and you also have a marketing manager that you don't need to pay. So that's why I really find it very beneficial for our affiliates. And the other thing is we work with thousands of affiliates and we know we see what's working, and we see what used to be working before but not anymore, or what's failing. So, it's good that we have this experience without really facing the actual work. So, it's always good to share what's working with our other partners to help them grow and win together.   Bradley Sutton: So, if you guys want more information, want to sign up right away there's no sign-up charge or no entry fee or anything like that. Just go to h10.me forward, slash, crush it, crush it. Two words, but it's together, no spaces. H10.me forward, slash, crush it and sign up. If there might be a little box that says, how did you find out about this or something, make sure to say that you heard about it on the podcast. Right before I started at Helium 10, I actually had signed up to be a Helium 10 affiliate and then Michelle was like my affiliate manager and stuff. So, yeah, we've come full circle here, but I want you guys to go ahead and crush it as well on there. So that's super cool. And then remember, guys, it doesn't matter where you are in the world. You know we've got affiliates in in Pakistan and Tajikistan and Japan and Korea, and I think the only country we don't have affiliates is North Korea. So, every other country in the world we've got affiliates because you know you've got an audience everywhere there and obviously Helium 10 works in so many different countries. So, make sure to sign up, all right, guys.   Bradley Sutton: So, uh, one more note is where you know Michelle is actually going to be doing like a little mini course in helium tend to help people learn more about being an Amazon influencer, so be on the lookout for when that, uh, when that comes out, and Gulsen is going to be working on the course of Turkish cooking for Helium 10. I'm just playing, but, uh, we'll have to think of a course that you can, uh, you can make for us too. But, thank you, thank you both, so much for uh coming on here. It's great to see, uh, you know people who were there from almost day one, uh, from when I started here at Helium 10, and, and we're the, we're, we're going to be like the trio here who keeps on going to, are doing.   Michelle: Thanks, Bradley, thank you for having us.

Amazon launches new Amazon Saver private label to help shoppers save, take on Walmart, Target https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Food/amazon-launches-new-amazon-saver-private-label-shoppers/story?id=113581546 US seeks to slam shut Shein, Temu trade loophole https://asiatimes.com/2024/09/us-seeks-to-slam-shut-shein-temu-trade-loophole/ Brand Registry Protection https://brandregistry.amazon.com/protection/dashboard?ref=brnav_to_impactdashboard Etsy Offers Subscribers Free Shipping While Aiming for ‘Tremendous’ Growth https://www.pymnts.com/news/ecommerce/2024/etsy-offers-subscribers-free-shipping-while-aiming-for-tremendous-growth/ Finally, maximize your Amazon FBA reimbursements with the newly revamped Helium 10 Refund Genie tool — a resource that could potentially reclaim thousands of dollars for your business. In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley covers: 01:00 - 1P Account Termination 02:13 - Ads in Amazon Rufus 03:25 - Amazon / Temu Brushing 05:10 - Amazon Coupon Update 05:37 - Etsy Seller Updates 07:14 - Amazon Export Central 08:47 - Amazon 3D Images 09:54 - Amazon Saver Groceries 11:35 - No More Cheap Chinese Imports? 13:24 - Brand Registry Protection 14:55 - Etsy Insider 16:10 - Walmart Ads Update 17:12 - How To Get Reimbursed By Amazon FBA ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On Youtube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Bradley Sutton: Amazon is terminating a lot of one-piece seller accounts, rufus is going to start showing Amazon ads, Esty is adding new features to its Prime-like service. These stories and more plus State of the End, to find out how I'm getting $6,000 back on a couple of accounts from Amazon for free how cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the new stories that are going on in the Amazon, Walmart, TikTok shop and e-commerce world. We also give you training tips of the week and let you know what new features there are at Helium 10 that will give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Let's see what's buzzing. I'd said a few weeks ago that, leading up to Accelerate, usually there's not much articles and, yeah, for a couple of weeks there were slim pickings for news, but today, all of a sudden, a bunch of stuff coming out of the woodwork. So we've got a number of stories to get into. Let's go ahead and hop right into it.   Bradley Sutton: First story is just something you probably saw on LinkedIn all over the place the last week. I'll go ahead and highlight a previous podcast, guest LinkedIn, right here. Grace, she talked about it here where it's hey, there was a message that went out to a lot of 1P sellers that said hey, we're going to stop sourcing products. This is from Amazon. You know the way that 1P works. You know like Vendor Central is. Amazon actually buys product from vendors and then you see it says shipped and sold by Amazon. So, effective November 9th, our vendor relationship will be terminated. So a lot of people had noticed and gotten these messages. So that means it might be time, as Grace says here, to hey start getting your ducks in a row for those who want to keep selling Amazon and move to three P. You know seller central. Um, you know some of you might reach out to an agency to do that or just start on your own. Obviously, hey, if you, if you're going to be controlling more of your own stuff instead of Amazon, definitely going to be really intense help. So make sure to utilize our tools to help you with that transition to controlling more of your own listings and things like that. Did anybody out there get a notice? I'm just curious Were your sales down or why do you think Amazon sent that notice?   Bradley Sutton: Next article up here is from Amazon Advertising, a little message that came out early last week and it said sponsored ads may begin appearing in Rufus-related placements. Okay, rufus related placements. Okay, rufus, is that AI tool that it's still tripping out for me? Like I don't think I can use it as a buyer. I saw a couple listings this week where it says the reviews state this and I'm like there's only one review here. It doesn't even say anything, it's only a rating. Like how could the review state something? But anyways, that's a side note for now. It says Amazon ads might start showing up in Rufus related placements. It says Rufus may generate accompanying text based on the context of the conversation. But here's the kicker your campaign reports won't include Rufus metrics. I guess you won't even know what's showing up in Rufus or not. So just you know, I haven't seen it in the wild yet. Again, I'm not using Rufus too much as a buyer, so maybe it is showing up out there, but that's going to be interesting. What part of this is going to be showing up in ads? And, like, how is it going to display if this is supposed to be an organic experience to help the seller or to help the buyers. We'll see, I'm sure, in the coming weeks. I'm sure Amazon Accelerate some things might be announced about that in the future.   Bradley Sutton: Now, you know, a common thing that comes up every couple of years is brushing. So for those who don't know, brushing is what happens when all of a sudden you start getting these Amazon packages or other packages and you didn't even order it. And usually what happens is these you know sellers out there on Amazon, other platforms. They want to build up the reviews. So they get, like these you know fake buyer accounts. They have addresses and they just send to you know free product, to, to to people out there so that they can, you know, set those accounts up to leave them fake reviews. Right now this seems to be making a case, or a comeback.   Bradley Sutton: This news nationnow.com article says that, hey, more Americans are receiving delivered package containing goods they didn't order and this is a scam known as brushing. Now something interesting says here in Illinois, one family told a local TV news station they receive one or two packages a day from Temu. So it looks like Temu is now getting in, or Temu sellers are getting in on brushing and so they said at first the constant deliveries were like experiencing Christmas every day. But then over time the family said the daily delivery simply became too much. Another customer, like a woman in Minnesota it says she received a box full of baby reveal balloons that she didn't order Packages delivered from Amazon and also included cupcake stands she didn't order. So like people are just getting random products here and there, didn't order. So like people are just getting random products here and there. Now you know sellers or amazon has said, hey, if you get brushing packages, first make sure that it's not just like a friend or relative giving you a gift you didn't know about, but says, hey, report the delivered package to the company, include the number of packages were delivered, along with the tracking number from the shipping label and any other information that could be pertinent, and that amazon investigate this. So I'm not sure how you can report it with Temu, but Amazon has a availability to report brushing scams. So something that came up early last week on your dashboard, if you in case you missed it, is the duration for coupons is going to be updated, all right. So, starting in last week, the maximum duration of three different kinds of coupons are going to be changed from 90 days, which is previously the max you could do, to now for standard coupons 30 days, reorder coupons 180 days, subscribe and save coupons 365 days.   Bradley Sutton: Next article is actually from payments.com, from Etsy says Etsy's new search tools aim to elevate quality listings and enhance seller success. All right, so now you know, Etsy has been trying to make a push to become a little bit, I guess, more relevant in the, the e-commerce game. And now that they have, uh, it says we are optimizing our search results to showcase a broader range of items for more sellers. We also want to make it easier and more fun to explore the depth our marketplace has to offer. And they say, hey, these changes that they've been making for Etsy listings have led to approximately 70% of shops on Etsy having more visibility in search. And sellers also now have a Etsy search visibility page and this basically gives sellers more insights into recommendations on how they appear in search. And they said, hey, you know, sellers have told us they want more transparency into what goes into Etsy search. So, guys, if you haven't, if you're selling on Etsy like myself, I haven't looked at this thing you probably should go in and look for your Etsy search visibility page. Get more information on this link to this article here that we have in the comments below. But you know you got to keep up on whatever platform you're selling on. Obviously, with Amazon you've got Helium 10 at the forefront giving you all kinds of tools, and Amazon itself is giving you tools for how to show up and search better. But don't sleep on these other platforms as well. You got to go on these other platforms to make sure that you still stay relevant and Etsy is trying to make some moves out there in e-commerce and so you can benefit from it.   Bradley Sutton: Going back to Amazon, actually going to Europe, now there's an article released by Amazon says Amazon launches Export Central, allowing sellers to export to 39 countries in Europe with just three clicks. All right, you know. So Amazon is not in. There's not an Amazon marketplace in every country. You know you've got Spain and UK and France and some of the major ones and some of the newer ones like Sweden and Netherlands, Belgium, et cetera, but now you can ship to those other countries, all right. So this article says sellers can reach millions of customers even in countries without an Amazon store. Today, amazon announced the launch of our Export Central tool, which allows sellers who are part of MFN Merchant Fulfilled Network to expand their reach to customers in 39 countries in Europe. Now, some of these you know places that don't have Amazon stores as mentioned here, like Austria, Portugal and Greece. Now you're going to be able to ship there from your inventory, that is, in your existing marketplaces, like UK and Germany, et cetera. Now this is going to be available to all sellers, even if they're not even FBA. If you're just part of the Merchant Fulfilled Network or FBA, you'll be able to utilize this service. Now FBA sellers are automatically enrolled into this program at no extra cost, and says that, hey, sellers who have enabled export from their EU stores have seen an average sales uplift of up to 10%. So if you guys are selling in Europe, take a look at this article that I have linked below and check your own Seller Central to see if you're enrolled in it and the implications if you're not, and, if you are, and see if it's right for you and let me know how it works out for you.   Bradley Sutton: Now, going back to the Seller Central dashboard, there was another update last week. It talks about uploading 3D models to help drive conversions. All right. So in some categories, such as home furniture, consumer electronics, shoes and eyewear categories, it actually supports 3D content and so you can go to Catalog in your Seller Central, hit Upload Images and then go to the Image Manager tab and then now there is going to be those products you have eligible for 3D. You can select your product and then check for the Register Brand Owner icon and then on the right page it says go to 3D models and select upload 3D model. All right, so you know, for some of these categories, you know having a 3D image there is very good for helping you know drive conversion. So take a look in Seller Central if you are eligible for that, and then obviously, your next step is you know there's a button there that talks about well, what are the 3D model? You know requirements for getting you know these images up there and you'll be able to get that information.   Bradley Sutton: Next article is from ABC News and at first glance it might not seem like it's impactful for Amazon sellers. Let me explain why I'm including this article. It says Amazon launches new Amazon saver private label to help shop shoppers save. Take on Walmart and Target. So you know how Walmart and Target have like their own brands. You know, like Costco's got Kirkland right. Well, amazon now is going to have Amazon saver right. Almost looks like Target products because it's all red here, but basically what the definition is it says Amazon's new private label brand, amazon saver, will offer an array of grocery staples, from crackers and cookies to canned food and condiments, and most Amazon saver items will be priced at $1,000. Under $5 and prime members will get an additional 10% off of these products.   Bradley Sutton: All right, so you might be wondering like well, that's terrible. Like, if I'm selling in this category, I'm never going to be able to sell again with these cheap products. But here, here's why I put this is Amazon historically has not done great in the grocery category. You know, like Walmart, I think, has them beat there. But then if Amazon is providing more of these cheaper products, you know like some of the products here is pancake syrup and sweet peas and coffee creamer and things like that for cheap, if more people are looking, are going to, you know, go ahead and start buying those things. Well, maybe you are in the grocery category and you have some other products, like some Korean snacks or Vita cup coffee out there, and, and maybe the people who wouldn't have bought your product just by itself. But now they're like, hey, I'm buying groceries anyways, let me go ahead and add these others to the cart. That's how I think it could potentially help Amazon sellers who are selling in the grocery category.   Bradley Sutton: Next article is from asiatimes.com and it's entitled us seeks to slam shut sheen and Temu trade loophole. So this is talking about the, the uh de minimis trade loophole hole that allows Chinese e-commerce firms like sheen, Temu and others to not have to pay tariffs. And then, you know, it allows them to just like ship stuff to the us where sellers are paying like three, four dollars and there's no tariffs, no, nothing, and that's why team machine are so popular, that's why Amazon is even opening this up, but there's some, uh, us representatives uh who are calling on us president to try to end this loophole. All right, so you know, check out this article if you want to go into into details. But a lot of us-based sellers probably would like that, because they're like man, how are we going to compete with some of these Temu products where it's just factory shipping direct? They don't have to ship their item to FBA? Temu has like minimal fees, and so that's why you know like you'll see a coffin shelf for like 10 bucks. I haven't seen my sales go down. You know too much, but you know other sellers might be affected by it.   Bradley Sutton: But an interesting thing that this article said was it quoted a professor at Shanghai University who said that if this is tightened, this loophole it actually could long-term benefit Chinese manufacturers by pushing them up the value ladder, it says. It said hey, if they tighten this rule in the future, they're going to have to change their strategy from selling low-priced items to high-quality ones. This is going to create new opportunities for many Chinese consumer brands. So what do you guys think out there? Do you want the US to close this loophole or do you feel like this Chinese professor says? You know what that actually could cause Chinese companies to up their game and be even more competitive in the future? I'm kind of leaning personally on the let's just close this loophole and make it a fair playing ground between US sellers and foreign sellers. But curious to see what you guys think. Let me know in the comments below.   Bradley Sutton: Next article is not really an article but it is again highlighting a former podcast guest here, leo Segovia. In his LinkedIn post he said he reminded sellers hey, you guys can actually see how many infringement and copycat attempts are on your listings, all right, so he showed some of them. He had like 2,000 attempts in the last six months on his products and 151 in September. This is like what's happening is like people trying to do something to your listing or create listings that copy yours, et cetera, et cetera. So he gave a link here that you guys can go to in order to see this. Like, this is not some special link. Everybody has access to it, but most of you probably didn't even realize you had it. So check the links in the comments section of this podcast and you'll be able to go to your dashboard. All right, it says it's called the Impact Dashboard, proactive Protections.   Bradley Sutton: Here's one of my accounts, the how Cool Is that? For Project X. I stay under the radar and I don't sell in niches that are super, highly competitive and that kind of keeps me away from some of those attempts. You know like, right, like if I'm trying to sell a product that's selling 500 units a day, I guarantee it's probably like Leo is going to have thousands of people trying, bad actors trying to attack me. But take a look, you know, like for me, from April to September, I've only had 110 cases, total for 2024. I've had 410, but still that's kind of crazy. For just my coffin shelves and an egg trace, 410 people have tried to do something. But that probably pales into comparison to some of you out there who have much bigger accounts than the. How cool is that account?   Bradley Sutton: Next article, going back to payments.com and going back to Etsy, it says Etsy offers subscribers free shipping while aiming for tremendous growth. Like I said, you've been seeing signs that Etsy is trying to like, you know, like hey, I see Amazon, Walmart, TikTok shop pulling away. We got to, we got to catch up Now. First of all, the funny thing is, if you read this article, it says CEO and CFO of Etsy said at a conference that Etsy seeks to distinguish itself from rivals like Amazon. But one of the company's recently launched initiatives is Etsy Insider, a paid subscription that will provide free shipping to members. I don't know how that's distinguishing. You're literally doing the exact same thing as Amazon, which is fine. I mean you should do free shipping, but it's funny that that statement came right after. Oh, we're trying to be different, you know, um than amazon. But one thing they are unique on is check this out something that does distinguish them from amazon, says. Other new efforts include an Etsy gift mode that lets shoppers send a message to the recipient before the gift even arrives. A plan to raise the percentage of shoppers using the Etsy mobile app from 40 to 75. All right, so take a look at this article. There's more interesting things, but, yeah, Etsy's trying to go ahead and up their game.   Bradley Sutton: Next article for those of you selling on Walmart.com you probably got this email from Walmart connect and it says unlock new brand term strategies to help increase your share of voice. So Walmart connect brand term targeting is now available for sponsored search automatic campaigns, in addition to exact match keyword campaigns, which launched earlier this year. Says that brand term targeting helps you to increase brand visibility by empowering you to strategically bid on keywords associated with your brand and those of your competitors. All right, so take a look at that email. If you guys are selling on Walmart and do Walmart advertising, I guarantee you've got that email somewhere. Check your junk if not, but make sure that you know what's going on. What's the new features? Walmart is always adding new features to its advertising platform and we implement as many as possible as well. For those who want help with Walmart advertising, we have atomic for Walmart, we have, obviously, research tools for Walmart, but make sure you're taking advantage of these things to you know. Keep your share of voice high on the Walmart platform.   Bradley Sutton: All right, that's it for the news this week, guys, but now I've got a question for you how to get reimbursed by Amazon FBA. This is a question that a lot of sellers are asking, because they got that notice they heard here on the Weekly Buzz. That window is closing could cost you thousands of dollars. All right. So you've probably seen ads from different services from saying, hey, we'll, we'll help you get those. You got to take action now, which is true, but almost all of those ads are for companies that are going to take 20, 25% or more of any money they find for you.   Bradley Sutton: How would you like to know how to get your money back for free? Now, don't get me wrong. Even Helium 10 has a service where we'll do the work, like all of the work, for you. It's called MRS, and if you're a big company who's owed maybe tens of thousands of dollars and you don't have time to submit all the claims yourself, yeah, we'll go ahead and do it for you for a fee. Go to h10.me/mrs, and you'll get a quote on that. But what I'm about to show you is 100% free for Helium 10 Platinum annual members and above, and this is the best way to get Amazon FBA to reimburse you money that you are owed. And it's your last chance to do it, because in October 23rd, that timeline is going to go away, costing you potentially thousands. In October 23rd, that timeline is going to go away, costing you potentially thousands.   Bradley Sutton: Let me show you a couple of the accounts I have access to and how I'm going to be able to get over $6,000 in just a couple of counts back from Amazon FBA, how I'm getting them to reimburse me, all right. So, first of all, the next time you sign into your Helium 10 dashboard, take a look at this banner on the top. All right, it'll say, hey, it's your last chance to claim. I look at this. This is one of my accounts here. I got $5,000 because I haven't been keeping up to date with my Refund Genie. So for those of you who have never used a FBA reimbursement service, you're going to see probably a big number right there. All right, so go there and hit open Refund Genie. Now, when you hit that it's going to go up to your regular Refund Genie dashboard. But you need to look at the stars, all right. So in this account I've actually got a few accounts connected and actually I had more than $6,000 original. I've already refund. I've already got a lot refunded by. I kept a few here's just so I can show you guys the process. But I've got like three accounts connected here. So let's go ahead and open up this first one creative, lg, household and healthcare.   Bradley Sutton: But what you guys need to do is look for the ones that say loss and damage and has a star next to it. Forget about all the old ones. If you see that there now really, really quick. If you guys don't have access to this, it means you're probably on like a like a Helium 10 free plan or starter plan or maybe just a platinum monthly. All you need this it's this is a completely revamped Refund Genie tool. So that's why this is like actually our training tip of the week and our Helium 10 new feature request. This is a newly revamped tool to get this. You can have access to it now if you're a platinum annual above. So if you're on a platinum monthly um. You can just upgrade to a platinum annual and you'll get instant access to this.   Bradley Sutton: So, anyways, what I'm going to do right here is click on this EU one. So I'm going to show you one from EU. I click details on one of these ones that have star, and then now I have all the marketplaces show up in this account. I'm selling in Germany, Spain, France, Italy, UK, Sweden and Poland, and so let's go right here to the UK one. All right, so now I have to open up seller central into the UK account. So go ahead, I'm going to go ahead and do that right now.   Bradley Sutton: And then what I need to do is I'm going to hit help and then go to get help and resources, and then now this is different for different people, but sometimes on your page you'll see a widget that says inventory lost in FBA warehouse. All right, that's what you have to click on to get your amazon reimbursement from Amazon FBA. But if you don't see that, you can just hit my issue is not listed and then just type in investigate inventory missing in FBA warehouse, and then it's going to come up. What's about to come up right here? If I hit this button, it's basically just a FN SKU button and then now all I have to do is copy the ASIN or the FN SKU. I should say, and this one is going to be a potential refund of 600 euros, I'm going to get 600 euros back in like a couple seconds here, and then I'm going to hit continue. Once I paste the ASIN or the FN SKU into, I either get the money back instantly or I have to open up a case, and so in this one I'm going to open up a case because this was 600 euros worth and so they require a case to be open. So I hit create case and I create the case and they're going to get me back that money probably within a couple of days.   Bradley Sutton: I go back to Helium 10 and then I hit processed. And then let's go ahead and go on another one. Let me just find one of these smaller ones Like here's, one that is only three items and 28 euros, all right, so let's go ahead and copy this one. Let's go to Amazon. I'm going to go back to get help with a new issue. I hit inventory loss and FBA warehouse paste the FN skew. I hit continue and let's see what it says. Boom goes a dynamite right here. You remember how Helium 10 told me that I was owed three units and 28 euros. Well, look what Amazon just told me. In this case, yes, you are right, three units reimbursable. These items have been processed for reimbursement. I'm going to get that money. I just made 28 euros in about five seconds here. So I'm going to go one by one on all of these cases and I'm going to get hundreds thousands of dollars back on this one account.   Bradley Sutton: Let me just show how it looks in a US account. So I'm back here on the Refund Genie page and here's one of my North American accounts. It says Dial Cash let's go ahead and hit the details here and here we go. And it says US I got nine lost items, potential refund of $1,223. Oh, my goodness gracious. Again, I need to go to the correct seller central account and then I hit the help button and I hit get help and resources. And then how do I ask for reimbursement from Amazon FBA? Let me go ahead. And oh my goodness, let me open up this one. Here's one where there's five conference chairs that looks like Amazon lost and that's a total of $1,100. Oh, my goodness gracious, I'm going to copy that FN skew and go ahead and paste it over here.   Bradley Sutton: Inventory loss and FBA warehouse. Let's paste that FN skew, hit continue and let's see what Amazon says. I almost like want a drum roll right here or something. Boom, it says, hey, this you know, probably cause it's a thousand dollars I'm about to get back in one click. It says here well, we opened up a case and this can be transferred to an associate and there's a case already open, but I guarantee I'm going to get that money back.   Bradley Sutton: I everything that the new Refund Genie has been showing, I've been getting it back a hundred percent of the time. Sometimes even more I'm getting back than Refund Genie. Let's go ahead and do one of these smaller ones that they can refund me instantly on. Here is one product that is for $29.99. Let's go ahead and copy this FN SKU over. I'm going to hit get help with a new issue Inventory loss in FBA warehouse. I paste the FN SKU, I hit continue and let's see if Amazon instantly refunds me. Boom, there it is.   Bradley Sutton: Remember Helium 10 said I was owed one unit and Amazon says you are absolutely correct. Allow four to five days for this reimbursement to come into this account. So, as you can see I've got a lot more I have to do. I said $6,000. It's actually going to be across all my accounts about $8,000. And that's in two of my accounts. I've already been keeping up with the Refund Genie so it probably would have been been over $10,000 for me if I wasn't. But, guys, this is money in your bank account.   Bradley Sutton: Now, how much can you possibly get? It depends. If you've only been selling for a couple of months and you've sold maybe $20,000, amazon might owe you $20 or $100 or something like that. Probably not that much. But if you've been selling for 18 months and you're a six figure seller, you could be owed thousands of dollars. You know, potentially we are a seven figure seller. It's almost guaranteed If you've never done a audit, you it's almost guaranteed that you're owed thousands of dollars by Amazon of what they owe to you. And Refund Genie can help you know what that is. So if you have never used Helium 10 at all and you want to do a free calculator to see how much potentially you might owe, just go to h10.me forward slash Refund Genie h10.me forward slash Refund Genie. We've got a calculator here where you can just enter in your you know rough estimate of your sales and then we'll calculate how much could be owed for you.   Bradley Sutton: But again, how to get reimbursed by Amazon FBA? It is super easy. You just have to open up a case with Amazon, copy and paste the FNSKUs that were lost. There's also another thing that Refund Genie does is allows you to see the transaction IDs of damaged items. All right, so if products have been damaged at Amazon FBA warehouses, you can enter in all the transaction IDs and get reimbursed for those, for the ones that Amazon hasn't reimbursed for you. So you could get thousands of dollars back from Amazon FBA reimbursements on stuff that they have lost and they didn't reimburse you, just by submitting these reports. But you don't have to go searching, hey, what could you be reimbursed on or not? Helium 10 is doing all that work for you. And again, remember, this service is 100% free. We are not taking any commission on it because you're the one who's doing half of the work. All right, if you want Helium 10 to do all the work for you, like some of the other services, go to h10.me/mrs, and you know for the.   Bradley Sutton: You know I saw some. I was looking at a report. There's a lot of you guys out there who are owed potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars, like literally, like I'm like looking at Helium 10 customers like, guys, you are owed hundreds of thousands of dollars and you haven't asked for reimbursement yet. So you have like thousands of transactions and maybe you want you don't want to do one by one what I was just showing you how to do go to h10.me/mrs, we'll take care of all of it for you and, uh, you know we'll charge your fee, but for what I showed you today, guys, there is no fee at all. So make sure those of you who have a Helium 10 Platinum annual account or higher get in there and start getting your money back. And then let me know in the comments below how much did you guys get back Thanks to Helium 10 Refund Genie from Amazon FBA reimbursements. All right, guys, that's it for today's episode. We'll see you in the next one to see what's buzzing.

Tamara Zeravljev, an expert in TikTok advertising for e-commerce, shares her invaluable strategies for enhancing brand visibility. She explores how high-budget TikTok campaigns can significantly impact sales, utilizing engaging videos and influencer collaborations. Tamara also emphasizes organic content and user-generated videos to maintain freshness on your channel. Learn how to build your brand presence effectively, even on a tight budget, and the importance of product showcases for Amazon sellers looking to thrive on TikTok.

Chris Zurcher and Sarah Chung from Helium 10 share their inspiring journeys. Sarah reflects on her family's move from South Korea to California and her growth at Helium 10. Chris discusses his transition from Amazon seller to a support role, emphasizing the crucial analytics needed for 2024's competitive landscape. They delve into Helium 10's Supercharged plan, offering advanced tools to optimize e-commerce strategies and tackle seller challenges. Their insights reveal the importance of tailored solutions for maximizing profitability in a dynamic market.

We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Chief Brand Evangelist, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10’s newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level. Amazon checkout process hits technical snag during Labor Day sale https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/30/amazon-checkout-process-hits-technical-snag-during-labor-day-sale.html Walmart wants to beat Amazon at its own e-commerce game https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/walmart-wants-beat-amazon-its-own-e-commerce-game Walmart to Compete Directly with Amazon on Marketplace Logistics https://www.webpronews.com/walmart-to-compete-directly-with-amazon-on-marketplace-logistics/ Most retailers not prepared for a TikTok shut down https://www.retailcustomerexperience.com/news/most-retailers-not-prepared-for-a-tiktok-shut-down/ Amazon launches AI shopping assistant Rufus in the UK https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-launches-ai-shopping-assistant-121706169.html? Temu and Shein packages are flooding delivery networks. Will the surge persist? https://www.retaildive.com/news/temu-shein-shipping-delivery-industry-impact/725707/ For Amazon sellers, we've got game-changing strategies up our sleeves, featuring a deep dive into Helium 10’s  BlackBox tool Competitor tab. Learn how to pinpoint your closest competitors through shared keywords, supercharge your product listings, and fine-tune your Amazon PPC campaigns to stay ahead in a fiercely competitive market. Don't miss out on this invaluable news and insights! In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley covers: 00:53 - Amazon's Technical Snag 02:03 - Walmart Levels Up 03:17 - Using WFS Beyond Walmart 04:59 - TikTok Contingency Plan 07:00 - Faster Delivery for MCF 07:45 - Rufus Launches in UK 09:14 - Temu & Shein Changes? 10:36 - Training Tip: Black Box Competitor Tab ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Shivali Patel: Walmart now offering competitive rates to fulfill orders beyond its platform, Amazon, rolling out faster delivery options for multi-channel fulfillment and potential regulation changes that could affect pricing on Temu and Shein. This and more on this week's episode of the Weekly Buzz.   Bradley Sutton: How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the new stories that are going on in the Amazon, Walmart and e-commerce world. We highlight the latest new feature alerts from Helium 10, and we review a training tip of the week that'll give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Today, our host is going to be Shivali Patel, and so, Shivali, take it away and let us know what's buzzing.   Shivali Patel: First up, we have this news article from CNBC discussing the technical snag Amazon faced during its Labor Day sale. On Friday, customers were unable to complete purchases due to some technical issue in the checkout process. Sometimes the consumers would encounter error messages featuring Amazon's famous dog photos. This glitch occurred just as Amazon was rolling out major discounts for the holiday weekend, frustrating those customers eager to grab deals, leading to it quickly becoming a topic of conversation for social media. For sellers on Amazon, this should serve as a reminder for you guys of the impact that technical challenges can have on sales, especially during big promotional events. While Amazon saw a robust $148 billion in the second quarter, things like this can really damage both sales performance and consumer trust. So, as that holiday season peaks around the corner, make sure that you guys are staying vigilant during peak sales periods to manage your customer interactions and monitor any potential issues that could affect your business.   Shivali Patel: Next up, some Walmart news. We have Fox Business reporting on Walmart stepping up its e-commerce game with bold new strategies aimed at expanding its product offerings. Currently dominating brick-and-mortar retail, Walmart has only a 6% share of the online marketplace, compared to Amazon's commanding 38%, but they're working hard to close that gap. Walmart's leveraging its vast physical store network as fulfillment hubs, while increasing its focus on its online marketplace. The company's actually been rolling out new categories, such as the premium beauty category. This is gonna feature brands like T3 and CauseRx if you've heard of them and they're launching initiatives like Resold at Walmart for pre-owned goods on the Walmart marketplace, which is designed for sellers like you and I, not to mention that Walmart's marketplace has achieved over 30% sales growth for four consecutive quarters and while it's not at Amazon's level, this expansion is only one more reason for you guys to begin considering Walmart as a viable e-commerce platform. If you're not actively selling on it. Increase competition or new opportunities to diversify sales channels and take advantage of Walmart's lower fees and growing customer base. You decide. And this leads me into the next news piece from WebPro News.   Shivali Patel: You guys, if you didn't know, Walmart now has a Walmart's multi-channel solutions program, which allows sellers to fulfill orders from any e-commerce site using Walmart's fulfillment services, offering competitive rates that are 15% lower than its competitors. I mean talk about making the platform an even more attractive option for third-party sellers. Starting September 10th, sellers will be able to use Walmart's extensive warehousing, delivery and return services to fulfill orders from other e-commerce platforms, including Target, Etsy and even Amazon itself. This initiative expands Walmart fulfillment services and directly challenges Amazon's fulfillment by Amazon model, allowing sellers like you and I to manage logistics with Walmart's resources For sellers, using Amazon or other platforms. So if this is you, this means you will now have an alternative fulfillment solution that offers cost-effective logistics, helping you streamline operations while reaching customers across multiple channels. Walmart's logistics services will feature plain, unbranded packaging and two shipping options expedited and standard, though there are going to be some limitations for specific products, like multi-box orders, so just make sure that you read up on those things. Despite these challenges, Walmart is aiming to reshape the logistics landscape and offer more flexibility for sellers across the board. This, you guys, has really big implications for e-commerce and, as a seller, I would just encourage you to keep an eye on how this logistics network evolves over time and provides even more opportunities for growth.   Shivali Patel: Okay, let's switch over to TikTok. A news report from Retail Customer Experience has revealed that, while a majority of retailers 68% of them believe that a potential ban or sale of TikTok would negatively affect their business, only 28% actually have some sort of contingency plan in place. TikTok has become a crucial platform for product discovery, with over two-thirds of the actual consumers finding products on the app and then purchasing them elsewhere. So I would say for Amazon and Walmart sellers, this sort of uncertainty around TikTok's future could potentially pose a disruption in customer acquisition, particularly as 81% of retailers are actually using TikTok to sell directly to consumers. I think we all recognize how monumental viral content can be for a business, and it's no secret that viral content on the platform has led to issues like stockouts and delays. So are you prepared for any impact associated to a possible shutdown? According to the article, 73% of consumers plan to use TikTok as inspiration for their holiday shopping and 59% intend to make purchases directly through TikTok shop, whereas 39% of consumers named Facebook as the platform where they will spend a majority of their time if something happens to TikTok, meaning that there is going to most likely be increased competition for attention on those platforms, on the social media platforms that are not TikTok, where people are finding inspo. Consider diversifying your marketing channels from now and create those contingency plans to prepare for the potential loss of TikTok as a sales tool.   Shivali Patel: Now I'm not saying that it's gone just yet, but be prepared is what I'm getting at. Of course, quite a bit of things are category dependent, but as the holiday shopping approaches, I really think it's important to have a robust strategy across multiple channels, and that will be paramount to maintaining visibility and customer engagement. All right now directly from Amazon and you can find this inside of Seller Central News. But Amazon just rolled out faster delivery of multi-channel fulfillment orders, and this gives sellers a big advantage in meeting customer demands. The updated delivery speeds come at no additional cost, and standard delivery has improved to three business days, which is down from five business days. Expedited delivery has improved to three business days, which is down from five business days. Expedited delivery has improved to two business days, down from three, and priority delivery has been discontinued. Any new orders will be charged at the expedited rate. This improvement means your customers can enjoy faster shipping, helping you boost satisfaction and sales across your channels. Take advantage of these updates to grow your business by providing even quicker delivery. For more information, you guys can just go in and tap this link right here.   Shivali Patel: In other news, amazon just introduced its newest tool in online shopping an AI-powered assistant named Rufus. Are any of you guys familiar with it? Let me know in the chat. I feel like I've mentioned this before on Buzz, but I was in the UK just a couple weeks ago and actually got to see this during my shopping experience in the app, so it's now in beta for select UK customers. Rufus is designed to enhance the shopping experience by answering your customer questions, offering personalized recommendations. Like, let's say, you say I'm preparing for a camping trip. It would give you recommendations based off that and just helping in general with product discovery. So, using Amazon's vast product catalog and web data, rufus can assist with everything from suggesting the climbing gear, the camping gear, to comparing products like lip gloss versus lip oil, and I think for sellers, this represents an interesting and exciting development in how customers can find our products. So, with Rufus, shoppers can save time and make more informed decisions, ultimately improving the overall experience and potentially driving more sales. This AI integration really highlights the future of e-com, you guys, and it's only going to continue to evolve. As Amazon continues to roll out this tool, I anticipate that more AI-driven features will come out that can change how customers interact with our products, which is why, of course, you'll want to keep tuned in to weekly buzzes to ensure maximized product visibility.   Shivali Patel: And finally, let's talk about Temu and Shein, as they've surged in popularity, now sending about 900,000 packages daily. That is insane. That is a lot of packages, and I know a lot of you are concerned on whether this signals incoming price wars. These packages enter the country using the D Minus exemption. Now this helps keep shipping costs low, which allows the company to offer highly competitive prices. However, increasing scrutiny from lawmakers could actually impact this exemption and potentially affect both companies and the carriers that depend on their volume. What I mean by this is parcel carriers like UPS have seen notable growth with the rise of Temu and Shein, and both rely on low-cost shipping rates, which help them keep their product prices affordable, while slower delivery speeds 6 to 22 days for Temu and then 10 to 13 for Shein are the trade-off for shoppers. The high volume of packages keep those carrier trucks full and routes efficient. However, if regulatory changes alter the shipping process, costs could rise, impacting the current delivery boom. So keep an eye out for any potential changes in regulations. With that, that is it for this week's news.   Shivali Patel: Now let's talk strategy. Let me show you how you can easily find your closest competitors for any Amazon product. Now, why is this important and how can it help you make money? Well, if you're researching a new niche, you need to understand who your competition is. Who do you need to watch out for? Who should you study at the keyword level to understand where they're getting their sales from? This tool will help you do just that. Using Black Box's competitors tab, you can input any ASIN that has some sort of history, something that's sold decent volume, and you'll want to avoid new products that aren't ranking yet, because the tool works best with established products. What it does do is it shows you the closest competitors based on how many keywords they rank similarly for. So, for example, let's say I were to input something in like an LED makeup case, I would see other products that are ranking high for the same keywords that that LED makeup case is ranking for, such as lighted makeup case or LED makeup bag.   Shivali Patel: Let me actually share my screen and show you how it's done. You're going to navigate over to the fourth tab inside of Black Box, which says competitors. You're going to input in your own products ASIN or, let's say, a competitor's ASIN, which is what I'm doing, and then click search. In doing so, in my case, I got back 187 products here. So in my case, I got back 187 products here. If you are unfamiliar with the P index that's listed right here. This is what it is sorted by default. It tells you how closely related the products are based on shared keywords. So a product with a higher P index, closer to 10, means that the product is ranking for many of the same keywords as the one that you entered. Now. This is useful because you can immediately gain insight into how relevant these products are compared to yours.   Shivali Patel: A lot of what we're looking at here in these results is makeup cases. They're just a bunch of additional makeup cases. However, you really never know Like. When I run the same search, typically with coffin shelves, I see other products like makeup shelves, spiderweb shelves or even goth themed items. So, depending on your niche, running the search is really really great for understanding what other products are closely competing with yours. From there, the next step would be to take these and jump into Cerebro to check out exactly which keywords these products are ranking for. From here, the next step would be to jump into Cerebro to check out exactly which keywords these products are ranking for. From here, the next step would be to jump into Cerebro to check out exactly which keywords these products are ranking for, or even take one of these products and start a fresh competitor search inside of Black Box to dive a bit deeper. Or let's say that you need to discover which products to target for your sponsored display or sponsored product campaigns Products that you know have a better offering or maybe some incentive over, so that if you appear on their product pages, you could potentially capture the sales.   Shivali Patel: You can just use the filters at the very top to narrow down your search, and that is going to be these filters right here. So let's say, for example, you are looking for products that have fewer reviews than yours you would input in a max for review count. Or maybe you're looking for products that have fewer reviews than yours you would input in a max for review count. Or maybe you're looking for the ones where your product is actually priced a little bit lower you can type in a max for price point. So, in short, guys, this tool is invaluable for competitor research, generating PPC targets or identifying product opportunities in your niche. If you're seeing irrelevant products after the top five or so, then that's a sign that there are not many close competitors, giving you even more insight into the market space. Okay, that's a wrap. Hope you enjoyed this week's episode. We'll see you next week to see what's buzzing.

Can selling on Walmart.com be your new secret weapon for e-commerce success? Join us as we welcome Ryan King from BlueRyse, a true Walmart marketplace expert, who shares game-changing strategies for boosting your sales on Walmart. Ryan explains why diversifying your online presence beyond Amazon is not just a smart move but essential for long-term growth. He details how to establish a strong foundation on Walmart early, from crafting compelling listings to amassing reviews and maintaining brand consistency, all while catering to the unique preferences of Walmart shoppers. For those new to the world of e-commerce, Ryan offers a comparative analysis of Amazon and Walmart, shedding light on why Amazon is often the go-to starting point due to its extensive tools and higher volume opportunities. He shares insider tips on navigating Walmart's international selling stipulations and highlights the importance of brand registration to unlock exclusive advertising opportunities and protect intellectual property. Misconceptions about Walmart’s technology and algorithms are debunked, providing you with a solid understanding of how to effectively optimize your presence on this evolving platform. Optimizing your product listings on Walmart isn't just about slapping on a few keywords. Ryan emphasizes the importance of new product type level attributes and backend attributes for better search visibility. He also discusses the benefits of the Walmart Pro Seller badge and why re-uploading listings using the latest item spec 5.0 can make a difference. Learn how to craft clear product descriptions, optimize image stacks, and leverage sponsored product campaigns to skyrocket your sales. Plus, get the scoop on exciting new developments like sponsored brand shops and shelves that can significantly enhance your offsite traffic and ranking. Don't miss this episode full of insights to elevate your Walmart selling game! In episode 593 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Carrie, Kevin, and Ryan discuss: 00:00 - Advanced Strategies Q&A for Walmart Sellers 02:56 - The Importance of Selling on Walmart 07:33 - Organic Shopping Shift Towards Walmart 10:51 - Maximizing Profits While Avoiding Price Wars 12:41 - Optimizing Sales on Walmart Marketplace 16:47 - Managing Duplicate Listings and IP Claims 22:28 - Optimizing Walmart Listings for Conversion 27:22 - Walmart Pro Seller Badge's Impact on Ranking 29:32 - Optimizing Walmart Listings and Advertising 33:03 - Optimizing Walmart PPC Campaigns for Efficiency ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On Youtube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos  

Is your Amazon product logistics strategy ready for Q4? Join us as we sit down with Burak Yolga, Co-Founder & CEO at Forceget, a leading expert in global supply chain and logistics, who reveals crucial strategies that Amazon sellers need to thrive in the fast-approaching holiday season. Burak unpacks how to save money on logistics and explore new marketplaces amidst the rise of new players like TikTok Shop Temu, and Shein. As a special treat, Burak shares his favorite restaurants in Istanbul, just in time for Bradley who is heading to the upcoming conference in the city. We break down the factors driving up international shipping prices, from reduced vessel schedules to container shortages and shifting market demands. High inflation and the growth of platforms such as Temu and AliExpress are reshaping e-commerce, creating new challenges for Amazon sellers. Learn how to navigate Amazon Global Logistics’ practices, adapt to the new fees, and optimize your shipment strategy to stay competitive in today’s volatile market. This episode is a goldmine of insights for those grappling with the costs of selling large items on Amazon. Discover why more sellers are turning to third-party logistics providers and exploring multi-channel selling to maximize profitability. We highlight the benefits of early inventory planning, the impact of Amazon's new delivery rules, and the critical need for flexible fulfillment options. Plus, find out how expanding into physical retail stores like Walmart can be a game-changer for your business. Tune in for expert strategies that can transform your logistics approach and boost your bottom line this Q4. In episode 593 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Burak discuss: 00:00 - Global Supply Chain Insights and Tips 04:11 - Impact of Rising International Shipping Prices 07:20 - Impact of New Amazon Fees 12:26 - Amazon Global Logistics vs Independent Freight Forwarder 16:38 - Maximizing Amazon Seller Profitability 17:31 - Expanding Sales Beyond Amazon  23:00 - Diversifying Sales Channels and Maximizing Profits 24:03 - Saving on FBA Fees and Freight 30:11 - Benefits of Investing in Your Brand’s Website ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On Youtube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Bradley Sutton: Today we've got one of the world's leading experts on global supply chain and logistics and he's going to talk about a wide variety of topics, like things Amazon sellers can keep in mind for Q4, how they can save money on logistics and expanding to other marketplaces. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Black Box by Helium 10 House is the largest database of Amazon products and keywords in the world. Outside of Amazon itself, we have over 2 billion products and many millions more keywords from different Amazon marketplaces, from USA to Australia to Germany and more. Use our powerful filters to search through this database for pockets of opportunity that you might want to get into with your first or next product to sell on Amazon. For more information, go to h10.me/blackbox. Don't forget you can save 10% off for life on Helium 10 by using our special code SSP10. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That's completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed, organic conversation about serious strategies for Serious Sellers of any level in the e-commerce world.  And we got somebody who helped Serious Seller all over the world, I think the third, maybe fourth time he's been on the Podcast. Burak, how's it going? Man? I'm great. Bradley, Thanks for having me again. Burak: I'm great. Bradley, Thanks for having me again. Bradley Sutton: Are you in Miami right now? Burak: Yes, Miami Florida. Bradley Sutton: Okay, I'm wearing my Miami hat. This is, like, I think, an older minor league baseball team or something. That's why I'm wearing my Miami hat today in your honor. But you're originally from Turkey. Did you know that I'm going to Istanbul in a little bit? Burak: I think you mentioned. Yes, I'm very excited. I wish I was there to take you to the best food restaurants, you know. Bradley Sutton: You'll have to tell me what the good ones are. Are there any in Istanbul that for sure I need to go to so I can maybe even by myself I can go? Burak: I think you should definitely visit Galata Port. It's a new place. It's right by the water. There are some good Kebab places and also definitely Baklava. You should try Gülolu, the best Baklava in the world. Bradley Sutton: Perfect, all right, I'm going to those places. By the way, I'm not sure when this podcast is going to go out, but if anybody is in Turkey and is down to meet me on September the 4th or 5th and you want to go with me to one of these restaurants or take me there. Conference I'm speaking at, you can get a link to it at h10.me forward slash Istanbul. H10.me forward slash Istanbul. It will forward you to the conference I'll be speaking at. So, I'd love to do like a little mini-Helium 10 meetup over there. Now. We're not here just to talk about Turkish food and Turkish delights. I'm sure we could spend a whole episode. You know as much as I love food to talk about that. But you know you're one of the leading experts in the world about, you know shipping and logistics and things like that, so let's just hop right into it. You know the last time you were on this show was episode 457. So, by the way, if anybody wants to get Burak's more of his backstory, actually go back to the very first episode he was on, which is episode 324. You can learn about his origin story. And then 457, we talked about some other topics, but what was 457? I think it was around, like you know, May, June of last year. So obviously you know things in logistics change month by month, even. What are some of the biggest changes that sellers should be aware of, just in general? First of all, in the logistics world, whether it's about pricing or taxes, what can you tell us has been different since the last time you were on the show? Burak: You know you're right, things sometimes change its daily base and you know, when we started ForceGet, it was probably five years ago, we were mainly focusing on international shipping, but we became more like a supply chain. Now there has been a lot of changes within our company as well as in the world. In the industry, with the e-commerce, especially with the Amazon FBA plus, the new players are coming into the market TikTok, Teemu, Shein and Shopify. According to the reports, they have lost some revenue. However, a lot of companies they're trying to enter omnichannel. That's something that I mentioned before we start recording. When it comes to international shipping, actually, international shipping prices increased. Compared to six months ago. I think we have seen the lowest shipping prices last probably a few decades. Full container price was almost uh 1500 dollars from China to Los Angeles. Now it went back up to seven, eight thousand dollars. Now we see the range of five thousand, five thousand, five hundred dollars, which is, I think, a hell to range for both um shipping lines, freight forwarders, as well as for f the um e-commerce and amazon sellers. Bradley Sutton: Prices went down but then prices have been going up again for different things. Obviously, there was that thing that happened last year in the Red Sea and things like that. So obviously there's always random things COVID, or there's a container ship blocking the whole Suez Canal or something like that. Those would obviously have an effect. But the recent price increases in shipping, like what is that attributed to? Because, like, is that because of the, the war that that's happening, or is it something else? Burak: Actually, this was uh sort of uh happened, I would say, inorganically. Uh, one of the reasons was the shipping lines. Uh, you know all these worldwide companies like Hyundai, Zim, Evergreen. I'm sure everybody's familiar with that big logo block less US channel they have canceled a lot of scheduled vessels because maybe 30%, 40% of the container vessel was not 100% fulfilled, vessel was not 100 percent fulfilled. Basically, they were losing a lot of money so they decided to roll over one of the week's shipping schedules to the next one. So basically, there was not enough demand but there is a lot of supply. Obviously then the prices start going down, basically in order to save money on the fuel, maybe the crew, maybe the insurance. So, they started to cancel a lot of scheduled vessels and obviously this caused a big chaos in the market. A lot of containers went, uh from China to other places like Europe, us did not come back. Then we start having container shortage. So, this is something uh started organically. Uh, there was not enough demand in the marketplaces, like in the US, like North America, USA, Canada, because of, I would say maybe, high inflation, or companies like Teemu, AliExpress start to do very cheap price Drop shipping from China, which is something interesting that we maybe talk later. Teemu is start entering US market. Start working with local 3PLs to acquire Amazon sellers to start selling the ones which are qualified OEC. Start selling on Teemu so they will start doing local deliveries with a shorter period of delivery times, which I believe they will try to attract Surplus. What is Surplus? The product that already has been sitting in the US for a long time. Amazon sellers or their wholesalers they cannot sell it, so they need to liquidate the product. So, Teemu was basically saying that hey, use our platform to liquidate them, not on the retail price, but heavily discounted price, maybe 60%, 70%. So, I think all these things happening last two years after COVID, when we saw a very big peak when the Amazon sellers were making really good money but then the sales dropped a couple of different reasons, and I see that it's the same thing is affecting the international shipping prices and fulfillment prices. Things are really very different right now compared to even six months ago. Bradley Sutton: Obviously, this has been the year of crazy Amazon, new fees and new announcements, you know, be it inbound, placement fees, and so I want to talk just a little bit about that. First, like in your you know you're handling both sides, you know, be it. You know shipping side, be it logistics side, warehousing and things. What have you seen as far as how this has changed, what Amazon sellers are doing, like, for example, me, I've got my own warehouse, but still now I'm being very mindful of how many you know, like, how many, you know what kind of boxes I'm putting in. Like, like, maybe before I was only trying to do you know a certain number of shipments, but now I'm like, no, I got to have minimum five, you know of one box or, oh, I need to try and increase a 15 because I got to avoid that placement fee. But what have you noticed as far as your clients? How are their practices different because of some of these new fees? Burak: Man. It's a really, really long topic actually when it comes to make it shorter version. When Amazon came up with this, the idea was start charging sellers for all those distribution fees that they need to ship to many small warehouses across fulfillment centers across the nation so the end user can receive the products not in two days but one day, even maybe sometimes half day. But we have seen a lot of case studies actually our customers. They created five shipments and when, let's say, 100 cartons, Amazon asked you to ship 50 cartons to Texas, we saw that the final delivery address Amazon distributed these products were still Pennsylvania or Florida or still North Carolina maybe. So what? Amazon was actually telling sellers in theory hey, split the shipments to five locations because that's going to be closer to the buyers. That was not really the case. Yeah, I guess they're still working on a lot of Optimization, uh structure. Obviously, this was like a new project for them. But there has been a lot of confusing for sellers. A lot of seller’s kind of felt like they have to use Amazon Global Logistics to avoid those uh placement. But then when they tried to book the shipment, amazon Global Logistics did not arrange to pick up. Three weeks, four weeks’ time Then they have charged people wrong HDS code. So, a lot of sellers they paid very high tax and duty instead of some other lower charges that they're supposed to receive. I mean, obviously we talked to a lot of people, some people they have good experience with Amazon Global Logistics, some people have bad experiences. But in my opinion that was not really fair for Amazon to tell people, hey, if you use AGL, then you will not be paying any of these fees, but then if you don't, then you have to pay for it. I guess I understand they have invested billions of dollars into this fulfillment center supply chain logistics, so they want to leverage the power of their seller the seller power, I would say. But I think I would not put all my eggs in the same basket, so I would not just use AGL and AWD, you know AWD also a new program Amazon has launched like two years. But since they're pushing a lot harder right now and I think the fourth quarter will be very tough uh test for Amazon with all the check-in processes, transferring uh products between the fulfillment centers and making sure that they become available and one of my I believe most of our customers now start looking into FBM options. Number one very high FBA fees. Number two all these delays with AGL, AWD, fulfillment center transfers. Obviously, amazon is going to prioritize. The products are already sitting in the fulfillment centers. They will prioritize to ship the products first, not receive the products first. So that always has been the case. So, if you ask my opinion, it's going to be a tough year for a lot of sellers to get and understand these FBA fees. But also try to be profitable. You know that's something that we've been talking about. It doesn't make sense anymore to say, hey, I'm seven, eight figure seller, but how much profit I'm making? So, I believe to make plan B, plan C is very, very important, Bradley. Bradley Sutton: Me having my own warehouse and obviously I can repack things and I do smaller quantities. I can easily make sure to send to four or five locations to get that, you know to skip the low inventory fee. But if I'm sending in containers and before I would send to Amazon directly, I pretty much have no option, right, like I am going to get that low inventory fee no matter what unless I send to a 3PL first and they divide it. Or am I thinking of that wrong, since I don't send containers directly to Amazon? I don't know, but is that correct? Like pretty much anybody who's sending full containers or containers that can't be broken up or shipments that can't be broken up, they're forced into this fee. Burak: Yes, kind of. But we have done some case studies to see what really makes sense, if it makes sense to ship, because Amazon Global Logistics is also not charging sellers the market fees. They're charging actually higher, a lot higher. So, if you're looking at door-to-door shipment from China to one of the most popular Amazon FBA fulfillment centers, let's say ONT8, which is in Los Angeles, California Riverside, if you use us it's going to cost $6,000, but with Amazon Global Logistics they're charging $8,000 or $9,000. So basically, they're kind of charging a little higher so that they can use probably that money to distribute the products within three to four different locations. And if it is LCL, then less than full container. Yes, you can actually choose to use your own freight forwarder and price is very similar. But one of the things that we realized; their FC transfer times a lot longer than using an independent Freight Forwarder. So, which means if you ship with AGL it will maybe be fully delivered to Amazon, fully check in, all received 90 days, versus you use your own Freight Forwarder, probably it will be delivered and checked in 45 to 50 days. So, does it matter for you? Maybe it doesn't really matter because the sales are not that fast right now, unfortunately, I don't see really much Amazon sales recently saying that, hey, I'm running out of inventory all the time. I hope it's a good problem. I hope some of the people having that problem. But majority of the people are saying, hey, I'm not in the rush, so I'm okay to take these fees. But then you should really understand the cost of actually paying everything in advance and your cash tied up to. If you're using a loan, if you're not using just cash, if you're, you know, withdrawing some money with, I don't know, amazon financing or third-party money, you get funding. So, you need to understand you may be paying monthly two to 3% because these are short term funds, so probably charging 20, 25% annually. So, every month you're paying two to 3% something that you're not selling. So that's basically three percent minus from your actual margin. So, there are so many things to consider. You know trying to explain as basic as possible. So definitely understand and see what is better for your business. And if I were a big seller, I wouldn't send all of my inventory FBA. I would keep some of my inventory in a 3pl close to amazon and send it in a you know, smaller batches and more frequent. This way I'm not going to be paying high inventory fees, the storage fees and, more importantly, I can test other marketplaces. You know, I can try to drive traffic. I will do FBM, I can do Tic Tac Shops or maybe even Walmart. So, it will give you more flexibility instead of sending everything to Amazon, FBA. And if one day somehow your listings get suspended or hijacked or your sales is down for some reason, then you'll be like, oh my God, what I'm going to do versus you have some inventory in a different location and you can start considering some other options. Bradley Sutton: We talked about new inventory fees that Amazon sellers are having to do, and then the question about whether to go AGL and things like that. But you also mentioned Fulfilled by Merchant. Now, for me, I do all of my products both. I have two SKUs for every product. I have FBM and FBA, and I always tell people to do that. Not necessarily anything to do with logistics, but just because there's still some people out there who don't have Amazon Prime and then, especially if we're talking about products that are priced below $25, they actually prime prices them out of it. So, like, if you're only FBA and you've got like a $24 product, when that person checks out, it's going to add like $8 shipping and now that $24 product became $32 product and you just lost that sale, probably you know, to somebody else and then so for, for that person, I can. I always have a skew. The buy box is actually the FBM skew, because it's only I'll do 2497, you know, with shipping, free shipping, I can, I can fulfill, uh, for almost the same as Amazon, considering that I don't have to pay, I don't have to send it to Amazon. I have to send Amazon pick and pack fees, but that's my reason for doing FBM, but are you saying that you're actually seeing some sellers go to Seller Fulfilled Prime and not do FBA, or you're just saying they're just forgetting Prime at all and having a listing that's strictly FBM? Burak: For larger items. We see sometimes only FBM, because some people say that, hey, Amazon is taking 50% to 55% of my sales price for large items. FBA is extremely expensive and I feel like a lot of people, a lot of buyers, are more price sensitive recently compared to two years ago. That's real. Most of our customers, they have both FBA and FBM. They do most likely what you do. Because you're right. I mean, some people they don't need the product in one day, they want to do the cheaper version. So why wouldn't you add an additional strategy to your listing? And it's your own money versus paying Amazon and 3pl will handle that a lot cheaper and then, if it is not a big item, your shipping price is not going to be that expensive. You can still buy the shipping within Amazon, which is great. You don't have to have your own ups FedEx account. But majority of our customers, they want to test new marketplaces. I  know that our some of our customer they're investing into their own websites and when they get the order, they drive traffic, they convert. Then it's much easier to launch a product with your own email marketing, like with your own email database which you've been talking about. You know how to launch a product, like all the honeymoon period, amazon changing the algorithms, a lot of our customers also they have problem with launching a brand-new product on Amazon. It's not that easy as it used to be like a few years ago. So, people are testing different marketplaces and different channels to see if they can get a better ROI. Obviously, amazon still has. It's very interesting actually, when we see the Amazon's quarterly earnings report, we see that Amazon is keep growing their profit, number of buyers, their revenue. We see a big part of it from the seller's fees revenue. But there is a fact that Amazon does not want to leave the market share to other players that aggressively come in, especially out of China. We see that a new Amazon program is going to roll out which is Dropshipping from China. I don't think that's a great idea, but I think just Amazon wants to keep it. Bradley Sutton: I don't think any Amazon seller is based in the US thinks that's a good idea. Burak: Not only Amazon sellers, but I think it's also not fair for other traditional importers who have, like a warehouse people in here. They're paying tax and payrolls. That's my personal opinion. Obviously, it's not a yes or no, white or black topic. A lot of people have their own opinion. But eventually I know that we have some importers, like traditional wholesalers, that their business is down 30 to 40% just because a lot of people buying products directly from China and those companies. Of course they have a cheaper price. They don't have local expenses, all these utility fees, the warehouse rents and et cetera. We all know that it all adds up. So, I think it's going to be a tough uh year for next year for a lot of amazon sellers. That's why I think it's a really good idea to start considering uh different strategies and different plans for uh increasing the revenue and profitability.. Bradley Sutton: We're heading close to Q4. Um, amazon's made different announcements as far as hey, have your inventory in by. I think one of them was like, if you want it for Black Friday, you got to have it in by October 19th, or something like that. They had said what are your predictions as far as like? Is this year the same thing as every year, where Amazon has a deadline and you got to kind of stick to it, or do you notice anything from some of these announcements where you think there's something that sellers need to be aware of going into this year's Q4? Burak: I think last week they announced a new Q4's delivery structure and delivery rules. Some of them are the restriction with FBA delivery appointments, reduction in capacity limits, holiday peak fulfillment fees. So, all these are basically saying that the amazon sellers uh, need to plan better when they're going to send their inventory, how they're going to send it. And you know the thing. What amazon wants you to do is actually send your inventory as early as possible. So, this way they can charge you a lot higher for the fourth quarter, with the maximum amount of, you know, the low inventory fee. Because even if you don't ship it to Amazon, you still pay in that inventory because inventory fee, because Amazon thinks that, hey, I, I allocate some space for you according to your sales history. Now, whether you ship it or not, I'm going to still charge you that. So, we have a lot of sellers. We I think they still don't know exactly how this fee structure is going to work for seasonal products. We had a client they shipped like four or five containers for Christmas lights, Christmas tree decorations. So, they don't have enough space right now in Amazon FBA. So, I think that is a problem for sellers, like they sell seasonal products. So basically, like what amazon is saying versus what they are doing. I think it's a little bit opposite, um, because you cannot really ship as much as you want, but then amazon is saying, hey, send me all this product. I want to charge you more, but same time you cannot do it. So, I don't think there's going to be a big solution for these people. The best to do is create an FPM auction to make sure you don't get charged all these high FBA fees, especially for the long term, and, God forbid if you miss that season. You can't sell out everything and you have some inventory left over. In January you definitely need to take the product back, otherwise your fees are going to be very high. Bradley Sutton: In the past you've talked about ways that, without even doing anything, major Amazon sellers can possibly save money, like they're probably doing something wrong or not taking into consideration the right tariff and or you know they're letting their freight forward or take advantage of them in a certain way. Can you remind everybody out there what are some easy steps they can take to save money? You know, without having to completely overhaul their entire system of where they could save a little bit of money potentially here or there, just by maybe doing a little mini audit on their SOPs or something like that. Burak: You know, I really think that they should go download their FBA fees and to see how much they're spending on their storage. That's one thing that Amazon is going to hit everyone really bad this year, especially in the fourth quarter. And what is the average age of their inventory stays in the FBA before they sell out. I know that there are a lot of people their sales decrease. I think one of the best ways to do is have a 3PL option. Ship everything to your 3PL and then ship it frequently to Amazon FBA. Because, yes, you will be maybe paying that placement fees but at the same time you can manage your listings somehow. We have seen last year, last quarter, that a lot of shipments delivered to Amazon but Amazon took way longer to check them in. So, we had some clients that they ship product to Amazon FBA. It's delivered but Amazon never checked in. They waited the busy season to pass. So that was pretty bad for some people and they were selling like toys or I remember we had a client that we shipped for them puzzles but Amazon checked them in like very late, so they had to like sell it for a cheaper price. So, you should plan it. Send in your inventory as early as possible on FBA and keep constantly shipping to Amazon FBA to avoid the fees. I think the big saving this year can be from the FBA fees. Obviously check the Freight prices. Compare AGL with other Freight Forwarders to deliver the products instead of one place to five locations. That's a good way to do it. HTS code is a great way to check that. But I think this year's big jackpot is going to be FBA fees. Bradley Sutton: We've been going over some beginner strategies, some advanced strategy. But if some of this is a little bit over your head or you want to just get a nice overview for you or your team about logistics and shipping, Burak actually is in Freedom Ticket 4.0. So, if you guys want to have your team go over some of the basics and some advanced stuff, to go into your Freedom Ticket inside of Helium 10 and then click on the week or the group of modules called supply chain and logistics, and then you're going to see some different modules here that Burak has done. That will help you with that. So, make sure anybody who's a Helium 10 member make sure to go into Freedom Ticket and be able to see it. Do you remember some of the other things that you talked about in that module? Just to let people know what to expect in there. Burak: I think yes. One of the things that relates to FBA fees are the product size, whether you can make your product smaller so Amazon will charge you smaller tiers. I know that we used to do some free audits for the FBA fees that what we realize is actually customer products are a different size than what Amazon is actually charging them, so Amazon is supposed to charge them lower. So definitely, order your competitor's product to see their packaging so that you can redesign your, maybe package. This is a little bit of my background. I lived in China eight years. I've done a lot of sourcing so I'm kind of familiar with like how to make things like lighter, maybe smaller, maybe if you're paying too high for the duty and tax because your product has a different material. So definitely I would say, order your competitor's product to see the size of the box. Maybe they fold the product, they maybe made it smaller. It's definitely helping to see what are the product sizes, mustard cartons and maybe even labeling and maybe inserting some special cards from the competitors. Obviously not asking five-star reviews, but you could see some other maybe conversions that they are doing, maybe because you have other products in the same category. You don't know whether your customers have them. You know they love your brand or not, but you can actually let them know that you're selling some other products that can be related. So, I think it's a good idea to order a competitor's product to see if you can save anything on the size of the product which can save you money on shipping fulfillment in the 3PL as well as Amazon FBA. So, it could be up to 10% to 15%, which is going to be, when you look at it, annually. It's a huge saving. Bradley Sutton: What else do you have for us? We've got sellers of all levels here and I think nowadays maybe people are thinking about some of these newer marketplaces, like TikTok Shop, which now you know, has fulfilled by TikTok and then, and then Teemu is now trying to recruit, you know, US sellers. You know I'm trying to get on the Teemu platform just to just to see how the process goes myself. But what are some things you think you know? When we think multi-channel, you know, gone are the days where people can just say, hey, I'm only going to sell on Amazon, and then maybe there are some days where it's like, oh no, I only need to worry about Amazon and Walmart. So, 2024, 2025, we live. I think it's the year of the many marketplaces trying to make a name for themselves. What are some trends that you're seeing? What is some advice you have for other sellers? Burak: You know? I think the Teemu strategy is very different than Walmart. If I want my products because, if you think about it, Walmart has thousands of stores across US and Canada and even in Mexico. Now they're trying to acquire sellers and they have been very active. You know we go to a lot of different events Prosper Show and others. You see that all the time Walmart's booth there. They're trying to acquire D2C brand events like a shop talk and stuff. What I see is, if you want your products to be in a long term, maybe one day a big brand acquires you because you're in a niche category. Let's say you're in a cosmetic, you're doing something maybe just special for lips or for some special type of skin. I don't know. You could be acquired by a big brand if your product can be on the shelves like physical stores. We have so many customers in the past that they started only online but then they were invited to as a test run to start selling on the retailers. Like you know, it could be Dick's Sports, it could be Walmart. If you're in a sports category, you know those retailers are trying to get some good brands on their shelves which can add a lot of value to your branding and people who see you actually on the physical store. They can go and buy online, because I personally love to compare the price in a retailer versus online. It could be Target. It helps you to find and give your brand a big shout out and people can go and find you and then wholesalers can find you. Maybe, like a retailer chain can find you. So, there's actually both options. I think you're right. I mean, there's so many options. It makes really sense to enter all of these platforms to have reached out the maximum amount of audience. But obviously you need to understand how to manage that inventory because different market channels require maybe different UPC codes, which one of our customers? They had an issue. What the UPC codes the factory is putting actually has not been scanned by the retailer. So, the UPC codes was not valid, so they had to bring the products back, relabel it. Uh, baby steps are good if you're a brand-new seller. Amazon FBA is very good way to start, but maybe it's not that profitable as it, as it used to be. Definitely look for the fpm options and then whatever makes more sense. But I would definitely keep one more sales channel, one more marketplace. Teemu is not the great one yet, because either you need to have a special invite, we have so many people actually asking about the Teemu. Either you have to be invited by a friend or referred by Teemu team directly so you can actually send an email to Temu. But I think in the long term it will be great to invest into your own website because you can easily launch different products. Great to invest into your own website uh, you can do it on Shopify and you know you will have definitely better margins in that and some people they have their own website. They even never want to go to Amazon because they want. They don't want to compete on the price. You, we all know that how amazon works, so it's really a long-term plan. I don't think anyone can really get rich that fast anymore through the e-commerce. I think it's all about branded strategy and it makes more sense to invest in your own website and Shopify. Obviously, amazon has the traffic. It's very hard to bring in traffic. It's not hard but it's going to be expensive in that converting. But, I know that Shopify is working a lot on how to convert more on the products they left in the cart how they can have better conversion. It's very interesting. Recently, I see that installment options pops up on many websites If you're selling an expensive product and I was going to buy a kayak for summertime, it was like $800. I'm like I don't want to pay $800. Then it pops up, hey, you want to pay six times. I was like, okay, but I still didn't buy. But it made me think about okay, that's doable, Bradley Sutton: You're a little bit more hesitant. Burak: Yes, exactly, you're a little bit more on the fence, exactly so looking for different channels definitely is a good strategy and eventually it's your own business. You know we have seen a lot of changes with Amazon algorithm. Maybe this new AI tool that Amazon is offering actually messes up a lot of people's listings. Have you heard? Have you tried using Amazon AI? Did it affect your ranking on keywords? Bradley Sutton: No, I'm not touching that, I don't want. I opted out of that immediately because I don't want Amazon doing anything, because the Amazon AI is nowhere near where it needs to be. All right. So, before we get into your last strategy of the day, just heads up for everybody out there. You want to get some more information about what ForceGet does. Go to h10.me forward slash ForceGet. That'll take you right to our hub website where you can open up a contact with them right there. How else, other than your website, can people find you on the interwebs like Instagram or LinkedIn you want to promote at all? Burak: Yes, absolutely, and they can subscribe to my YouTube channel. We are recording a lot of real case studies and scenarios, what's going on and we're going to a lot of different in-person events. We will be in Amazon Accelerate in Seattle. We will go to other events throughout the year so they can come and meet us in person at most of the events, as well as find us on forescan.com. Bradley Sutton: All right, what's your last 30 or 60 second tip for our sellers out there? Burak: Be careful about your lending costs. That's something that a lot of people they don't really pay attention. Profit is everything. Bad profit means bad cashflow and bad cash flow means that you can't be sustainable in your business. So, understand your lending cost. Look at your FBA fees, how you can save and what is the strategy. Are you paying too much for your international shipments? Are you paying too much for FBA fees? Are you paying too much for long-term storage? So, find out where you can make optimizations, where you can make savings. I believe this business is open to different optimizations and every different aspect you get closer you can find 1% or 2% saving, and if you find three to five different ways of savings, you can save up to 10%. So, talk to the experts. Don't forget to subscribe to the Helium 10's newsletter. I see a lot of interesting topics actually about that. So being part of the community, it's the most important things and whenever you have a problem, ask the right people, get the right answer to fix your problems. Bradley Sutton: Awesome. Well, Burak, thank you for coming on here. I'll let you know what I think about those restaurants you told me and then I'll see you at Amazon Accelerate in Seattle and hopefully some other sellers that are listening to this episode, and we'll definitely have you back on in 2025 and let's see what else has changed in the world of shipping logistics. Burak: Looking forward to see you, Bradley.

We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Chief Brand Evangelist, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10’s newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level. Amazon's revamped Alexa with generative AI to roll out in October https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/smart-home/amazons-revamped-alexa-with-generative-ai-to-roll-out-in-october/ Walmart Marketplace Accelerates Growth; Launches Category Expansion, Multichannel Solutions and Omnichannel Innovations for Sellers https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2024/08/27/walmart-marketplace-accelerates-growth-launches-category-expansion-multichannel-solutions-and-omnichannel-innovations-for-sellers How customers are making more informed shopping decisions with Rufus, Amazon’s generative AI-powered shopping assistant https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/how-to-use-amazon-rufus How Amazon is using AI to detect fake product reviews and ensure authentic customer feedback https://www.aboutamazon.eu/news/customer-trust/how-amazon-is-using-ai-to-detect-fake-product-reviews-and-ensure-authentic-customer-feedback China fast-fashion retailer Temu soared like a rocket for two years—in just a few hours, its parent company lost more than $50 billion in market value https://fortune.com/2024/08/26/temu-pdd-stock-plunges-government-scrutiny-amazon-rivals/ Amazon India to cut down its selling fees by 12% ahead of festive season https://www.livemint.com/companies/amazon-india-to-cut-down-its-selling-fees-by-12-ahead-of-festive-season-janmashtami-2024-11724471866431.html Join Bradley and other Helium 10 Members for an informal meetup in Mumbai early in the morning on Friday the 6th! We will be in the Crystal Lounge networking and would love to see you there! For more details go to: h10.me/mumbai Catch Bradley at the Istanbul Global E-Export Summit 2024 h10.me/istanbul and at the Amazon Global Selling Community Event PH Seller Bootcamp in Manila h10.me/manila Lastly, are you leveraging Helium 10 to its fullest potential? We break down the newest features of Helium 10's Chrome extension, including the X-ray tool's suggested PPC bid column and clickable brand insights. Learn how to split-test product images and ideas with real Amazon buyer feedback using Helium 10's Audience tool powered by PickFu, and listen to a special use case from Kseniia that showcases its power in product development. Tune in for all these valuable insights and more to keep your e-commerce strategy ahead of the curve! In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley covers: 01:17 - Alexa With AI 03:13 - Walmart Big Announcements 09:09 - Amazon Rufus 12:19 - Amazon Fake Reviews 12:55 - Shipping Time Settings 13:32 - Temu Trouble 14:21 - India Fee Reductions 14:54 - Meet Bradley on the Following Events 16:03 - Helium 10 New Feature Alerts 18:06 - Training Tip: How To Use Helium 10 Audience

Discover the exciting updates to Helium 10's Keyword Tracker tool, including a revamped interface with customizable columns. Learn how to track competitors and optimize keyword ranks for better visibility. Explore advanced features like the Instant Index Checker and CPR metrics that help you boost your product ranking. Gain insights on managing inventory during critical phases while maintaining sales momentum. Finally, participate in a lively Q&A session for practical tips and strategies to enhance your Amazon selling experience.

Explore the importance of accurate search volume metrics for Amazon sellers. Discover why these metrics are crucial for optimizing listings and PPC campaigns. Hear about the misleading comparisons between popular data tools, highlighting the flaws in their methodologies. Learn how Helium 10 achieved a high accuracy rate compared to its competitors. Understand the significance of maintaining civility in debates over accuracy and the necessity of fact-checking in the ever-evolving e-commerce landscape.