The Ecomcrew Ecommerce Podcast

Welcome to Episode 344 of the EcomCrew podcast! Dave and I are back with our usual banters and some sweet tactics for you to try out to improve your revenue on Amazon. One of the wisest things you can do as an entrepreneur is to take note of the things that worked for other sellers and try implementing them into your own business. In this episode, Dave and I talk about 7 Amazon hacks we’ve used for our own listings, how they work, and how they can benefit you. Timestamps: Hack #1: Strive to get an Amazon badge - 5:40 Hack #2: Use Brand Analytics to Your Advantage - 8:50 Hack #3: Add questions to your listings - 12:58 Hack #4: Be vigilant about your products’ measurements - 15:38 Hack #5: Use a refunds manager - 18:40 Hack #6: Use an IP accelerator - 21:30 Hack #7: Add foreign keywords in your back end - 24:27 If you want more advanced Amazon hacks, you can read the blog post written by our content writer Christine. It contains detailed steps to how you can improve traffic to your listing, save on fees, and more. And to ensure your success in Amazon, you can get our book, Amazon Domination, for free! Dave and I wrote this book to help our fellow entrepreneurs navigate Amazon better and to help them avoid the common pitfalls third-party sellers make. All you’re going to pay for is the shipping fee, and we’ll send you a free copy of the book. What did you think of this episode? Do you want us to continue our friendly banters? Leave a comment below or write a short review over on iTunes. Until next time, happy selling!

While COVID-19 has caused some serious drawbacks to a lot of businesses all around the world, there are some lucky business owners out there who, instead of experiencing loss, have seen their revenues rise instead. Chris Cage’s company, Greenbelly, is one such business. It seems like so long ago when Chris and I saw each other, and with all the things going on, I felt like we needed to catch up to see how his business is affected by the pandemic. In this episode, we’ll take a look at how COVID affected the behavior of Chris’ target market and how it helped increase his sales. Timestamps: What happened to Mike’s and Chris’ businesses at the start of the pandemic - 2:35 How the pandemic affected Greenbelly - 8:12 How Chris made sure that Greenbelly had enough inventory - 17:04 Other mediums Chris had been working on to improve his business - 18:05 Chris’ content marketing secrets - 24:17 How Chris manages his company’s Youtube channel - 29:10 Mike’s plans for the EcomCrew Youtube channel - 31:50 The challenges and advantages of podcasting - 35:00 How Mike grew the EcomCrew podcast - 38:00 Chris’ plans for Greenbelly - 40:50 If you want to know more about Greenbelly, you can visit their official website or listen to Episode 298, where Chris and I talked about how he started his business. If you want to increase your revenue just like Chris did, join us on November 12 at 10 AM (PST) so we can show you how we improved our products to make them stand out from the rest. The days of simply ordering products from Alibaba and stamping them with your label just doesn’t cut it anymore. Give more umph to what you sell so you can do the same to your revenue. If you like our free content, you’ll love our paid subscription! We will be opening EcomCrew Premium for the last time on Black Friday, and if you’re still unsure about whether to join, now is the time to toss the doubts away because this time, we will be giving the biggest discount ever! Sign up for the waitlist so you don’t miss this opportunity because when we reopen next year, we’ll revert to our regular prices. And whether or not you grab this chance to sign up for Premium, we still appreciate your support for EcomCrew. Please leave us a review over on iTunes if you haven’t already. It helps us reach more people who can benefit from our content. Until the next episode, happy selling!

Welcome to Episode 342 of the EcomCrew podcast! Dave and I sit down to reminisce about our biggest business mistakes and what we did to remedy them. This episode is not exactly fun for us, but we did learn our lessons from the mistakes that we made, and we hope you will too. Timestamps: Why we’re doing this podcast - 3:40 Mistake #1: My hiring dilemma - 4:09 Mistake #2: Dave hires too quickly - 7:55 Mistake #3: Translating my site into multiple languages - 9:12 Mistake #4: My attempt at creating a Grammarly-like website - 14:30 Mistake #5: Dave’s auxiliary sites -15:40 Mistake #6: Dave losing money through Vendor Central - 24:04 Mistake #7: Marrying a business idea that you shouldn’t be involved in - 27:10 Mistake #8: My biggest and most painful business mistake - 35:40 This episode may have reminded us of our biggest blunders in ecommerce, but it also showed us how much we’ve improved through the years. How about you? Do you have any business mistakes you’d like to share? We’d love to hear from you. Head on over to ecomcrew.com/mistakes, share your story, and get a chance to win an annual subscription to EcomCrew Premium! This subscription is valued at $1,500, so you don’t miss your chance! If you’re already a Premium member, we’ll extend your subscription for another year for free. You can even indicate in the form that you would want to be anonymous. EcomCrew podcast listeners can still learn from your mistakes without us disclosing your identity. If you want to learn how to make small improvements to your products to increase your revenue, join us on November 12 at 10 AM (PST) for a free public webinar on product differentiation. Gone are the days when it’s enough to pick something from Alibaba and sell it on Amazon. If you want to stand out from the rest of your competitors, you need to do something they aren’t and for your product to have something theirs don’t. And for those of you who are still on the fence about subscribing to EcomCrew Premium, we’ll make that choice easier for you. You can sign up for the waitlist now and enrol in Premium for a very special price. This is the last time this year that we are opening enrolment, so you better reserve your spot. We have great Black Friday deals for you that we haven’t offered before. If you enjoyed this episode, head on over to iTunes and leave us a review. We’d appreciate it very much. Until the next one, Happy selling!

With the holidays just around the corner, Dave and I thought it would be the perfect time to talk about seasonal products, their pros and cons, and the best ways to optimize them for maximum profit. But we aren’t just talking about Christmas lights and “4th of July” merch. We acknowledge that there’s a seasonality factor to every product, and we discuss this using our own brands as examples. Timestamps: The top Amazon keywords right now - 3:57 Different types of seasonal products - 5:48 The seasonality of Dave’s products - 6:69 The cons of normalizing your products’ seasonality - 10:38 Balancing the pros and cons of over-ordering products during peak selling seasons - 13:30 The gamble of selling in-season products all year long - 19:14 The seasonality of off-roading gear - 23:15 Some stats for Wild Baby - 26:18 Do we recommend selling seasonal products for new sellers? - 30:30 The best time to launch a seasonal product - 32:35 Speaking of products, if you want yours to stand out, we have some tricks up our sleeves that have helped our listings rank higher and our revenue grow. The great thing about it is that you don’t need to make any overwhelming changes.  If you want to know more, join us on November 12 at 10 AM (PST). This is a free public webinar, and we’re more than happy to answer your questions. If you like this episode, please leave us a review over at iTunes. Happy selling!

Email marketing is still important, but that alone is no longer enough these days. Ecommerce business owners need to look into all the possible communication channels that may be used to improve customer relations. In this episode, our guest is the co-founder and CEO of Omnisend, Rytis Lauris. He talks about omnichannel marketing and how businesses can make the most out of various channels of communication by integrating them into a single system where data can be collected from all of them. Timestamps: How Omnisend came to be - 5:14 Advantages of having multiple communication channels - 8:00 How Omnisend gets permission to contact potential customers - 9:53 Different channels Omnisend uses to reach customers - 11:48 The highest converting channel right now - 14:18 Omnichannel marketing and how it drives more revenue - 18:07 The amount of effort that is worth the reward - 20:55 The beauty of marketing automation - 25:48 Check out Omnisend and its useful services! And because you’re an EcomCrew podcast listener, you can get 30% off your first three months. Just use the discount code ecomcrew3x30 to start enjoying their tools. You can also reach out to our guest at rytis@omnisend.com. Aside from marketing automation, another thing you can do to increase your revenue is to actually improve your products. Marketing is one thing, but having superior products ensures that your brand maintains loyal customers. Over the years, we’ve done a lot of improvements on our products and are continuing to do so. If you want to know how we did it, join us on November 12 at 10 AM (PST) for a free webinar about product differentiation and how to do it properly. Until then, happy selling!

Welcome to Episode 339 of the EcomCrew podcast! In this episode, we decided to have a little fun by talking about the funny (albeit stressful) customer experiences we had while running our ecommerce business. Joining me in the podcast is Meredith Erin, co-founder of Boredwalk, a company that sells creative apparel. Meredith started the business in 2014 right in their garage together with her now-husband Matt. In this episode, you get to hear about some of the things we had to go through in order to keep our customers happy. We laugh about it now, but surely, it caused us some serious problems when we were dealing with them. Timestamps: The Package Stabber - 5:05 The customer who ordered a shirt in the wrong size - 7:40 Mr. Impatient - 9:26 Customers who get mad because the package shipped too fast - 9:59 Small mailboxes, big packages - 11:28 The time Mike had to call authorities on a customer - 12:00 How reasonable are customers in general? - 15:05  Advantages of having customer representatives - 18:02  Meredith’s bingo card - 21:50 Customers who can’t tell the difference between navy and black - 22:35 The effects of politics on a business - 24:10 Dealing with being open about mental health in product designs - 26:33 How Meredith dealt with people who hate their designs - 28:50 What it takes to be an artist an and entrepreneur - 29:46 The value of hard work in business - 31:11 The 4-hour workweek myth - 32:36 If you want to spice up your wardrobe, check out Meredith’s company, Boredwalk, and discover your next statement shirt! *** This November 11 at 10 AM (PST), we will be talking about product differentiation and how you can improve your products to make it stand out from those of your competitors. Product differentiation is one of our most favorite topics at EcomCrew because it truly makes a difference in terms of revenue as well as the overall customer satisfaction. This webinar is completely free, so sign up now to reserve your seat. **** For those of you who haven’t tried EcomCrew Premium yet, now is the perfect time to do so. We will be relaunching on Black Friday, and this will be the last time we’re going to do so in 2020. We have some sweet deals for you, so don’t miss it! Sign up for the waiting list today.

Welcome to Episode 338 of the EcomCrew podcast! Today, Dave and I are doing something new. We’re not just gonna be talking about ecommerce. We’re also gonna dive into the business books that shaped us into the people we are today. These books were highly influential especially as to how we handle our teams and operate our businesses in general. We talk about some highlights of the books and how we implemented what we learned into running our brands. Timestamps:  Mike’s new reading routine - 3:15 Ready Player One by Ernest Cline - 7:00 Book No. 1:The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey - 10:03 Highlights of Book 1 - 12:04 Book No. 2: The One Thing by Gary Keller - 14:14 How Dave implemented the ideas from Book No. 2 for EcomCrew - 17:15 Bonus Book: Who Moved My Cheese? By Spencer Johnson - 19:00 Book No. 3:The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader by John Maxwell - 20:10 Mike’s experience with employment - 22:47 The fear of losing one’s job - 24:48 Book No. 4: No Man’s Land by Doug Tatum - 26:24 Big vs. small companies - 28:40 Book No. 5: Traction by Gino Wickman - 35:28 Book No. 6: Ride of a Lifetime by Bob Iger - 39:34 Bonus Book: Shoe Dog by Phil Knight Dave’s most overrated book: Traction - 39:38 Mike’s defense for Traction - 41:30 Mike’s most overrated book: The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris - 45:14 If you loved this episode, listen to E175 of the podcast to get to know more about Mike and how he started his ecommerce journey. For those of you who are still on the fence about availing of our paid services, now’s the time to take the leap! EcomCrew Premium is reopening on Black Friday, and we have a very special promotion for you! This will be the last time in 2020 that Premium will reopen, and because of the spirit of the holiday, we’re giving a special offer to those who will sign up. Be a Crewmate today! Speaking of special offers, our friends over at Captain AMZ has one for EcomCrew podcast listeners. If you’re an Amazon seller, you know how important good reviews are for your business. Captain AMZ can help you automatically request reviews and feedback and track all of them in one place. Just head on over to captainamz.com and use the code ecomcrew10 or go to ecomcrew.com/captamz to get 10% off from their services. If you liked this episode, show us your love by leaving us a review over on iTunes. Until the next one. Happy selling!

Welcome to Episode 337! Today, I’m joined by returning guest and fellow friend in the industry who recently became a dad, Jeff Oxford!  Jeff is the founder of 180 Marketing, a site dedicated to helping ecommerce brands with their SEO needs and challenges. Jeff’s an expert in ecommerce SEO, and we can’t think of anyone else better suited to tell us about link building than him.  In this episode, we talk about how important link building is when it comes to increasing your site’s authority and how to avoid penalties from Google by sticking to the white hat tactics. Specifically, we talk about the following: How backlinks affect your site’s ranking - 4:00 What backlinks are - 5:00 Some statistics for Mike’s sites - 6:40 Sites that tell you how authoritative your website is - 7:20 The wrong ways to get backlinks - 7:50 The disadvantages of using black hat tactics to get backlinks - 9:40 Private Blog Networks and why you shouldn’t use them - 10:40 Strategy #1: The Power of Content Marketing - 14:39 Strategy #2: Collaborative Posts Strategy #3: Building Links through Books  Strategy #4: The Hidden Value of Resource Pages - 25:55 Creating a recycling page about your products - 27:48 Strategy #5: The HARO Method — 28:57 Strategy #6: Product Reviews - 31:40  Strategy #7: Awarding Scholarships — 33:30 Strategy #8: Being a Podcast Guest - 36:35  Strategy #9: Guest Posting - 38:38 When guest posting is not a good idea - 39:15 Sites for prospecting - 42:10 What 180 Marketing does - 46:45 Want to hear more from Jeff? You can  listen to our first  episode with Jeff, where he does an SEO teardown for one of our sites. If you’re interested in getting an SEO teardown for your own website, or just working with Jeff in general, you can reach him at jeff@180marketing.com. Link building is such an important aspect of improving your Google ranking, which is why our next Secret Sauce episode will be about it. To join, become a Premium member so you can get to ask Jeff your questions and to get access to the replays of all our past Secret Sauce episodes. Not ready to be a member yet? Join us on October 14 at 10 AM (PST) for a FREE Public Q&A webinar. We’ll be sharing some general tips and strategies from one of the things we know best: Importing from China. We’ve been doing in the import game for several years now, and we’ve built up a lot of  nifty tips for you. From finding the right suppliers and maintaining a good relationship with them, to making sure your products are up to spec even when you’re not physically in  China. We hope to see you there, and if you like this episode, please leave us a review over on iTunes. Happy selling!

Welcome to E336 of the EcomCrew podcast! After a long time, Dave and I are finally doing a podcast together, and we’re talking about something juicy. Some big players in Amazon recently had charges filed against them, which exposed some of the illegal practices sellers do to get their listings to rank higher. In a saturated market such as Amazon, some people are bound to resort to black hat tactics. If there’s any lesson from this indictment, it’s that illegal acts will eventually get exposed, so it’s best to stick to white hat tactics to save you the trouble. We’re not lawyers and we won’t even attempt to give any legal opinions about this. We’re looking at this news from an Amazon seller’s point of view. In this episode, you’re going to hear us express our frustrations and concerns regarding these practices because any Amazon seller knows that these have been around for quite some time. Specifically, we talk about What sellers should be concerned about regarding the indictment - 4:08 How they got Amazon accounts suspended - 5:48 Breakdown of the indictment - 7:28 Techniques they use to unsuspend their accounts - 8:08 Using firms to help Amazon sellers get their accounts unsuspended - 11:15 Suspension problems of some of our EcomCrew Premium members - 13:20 Ramifications of having your account suspended - 17:30 Competitor sabotage and how they managed to do it for years - 20:42 How they hacked pages of competitors to get ahead - 22:18 Mike’s concern regarding the morality of these practices 23:30 The difficulty of pressing charges against international sabotagers - 26:24 Why more people from third-world countries take the risk in these illegal acts - 27:43 Deleting tracking information to reflect that the inventory was lost - 31:00 Bribing employees to increase their storage limits - 31:57 Making a plan of action that is not intended to be followed through to get an account unsuspended - 34:00 Getting another seller’s supplier invoice and selling it to competitors - 36:58 Should sellers be worried? - 40:24 The difficulty of choosing only white hat tactics - 43:25 For more information regarding this topic, check out the article Dave wrote about the indictment. We’d also love for you to join us on our free webinar on October 14, 2020, at 10 AM (PST). We’re going to be talking about how we successfully imported high-quality products from China and we’re going to share our secrets when it comes to negotiating with suppliers and making sure that our products meet our specifications and quality standards. If you liked this episode, please leave us a review over on iTunes.

Welcome to E335 of the EcomCrew podcast! This is a special episode because it’s the first time that we have a returning guest from our Under the Hood segment. We started doing Under the Hood back in 2018 to give free hour-long advice to other ecommerce sellers and feature them on our podcast. This year, we’re touching base with our past guests to see how they’re doing and how our advice impacted their business. When our guest, Richard Phillips, was here 2 years ago, he had recently made the transition from affiliate marketing to actually selling physical products. If you missed that, check out E155. In this episode, Richard and I talk about Richard’s ecommerce journey - 2:28 Not being discouraged about business mistakes and failures - 6:28 Why Richard went into the glassware industry - 7:40 The importance of packaging for giftable items - 10:05 Is Amazon the right place for Richard’s products? - 15:15 Buyer behavior during holidays - 15:45 Using Amazon customization to make products more special - 18:15 Who should be using Facebook ads - 24:00 Using Google AdWords - 30:40 Using influencer marketing to promote your products - 34:15 Influencer tiers and what factors to consider- 35:24 How many products you should give away to influencers - 37:54 The advantage of having a catalogue of products - 40:35 Increase in traffic at tactical.com - 44:15 How Mike’s writers make good content - 48:55 If you would like to get more reviews for your Amazon listing, we have a great deal for you! We are partnering with Captain AMZ to give EcomCrew podcast listeners 10% off on their paid plans. We know how useful they are to sellers because we use them personally. Want to be a guest in our Under the Hood episodes? Sign up now and get the chance to be featured on our podcast and get an hour of coaching. If you liked this episode, please leave us a review over at iTunes.