The Ecomcrew Ecommerce Podcast

In October 2016 Amazon laid down a rule that's a double edged sword--incentivized reviews are no longer allowed. On the one hand, it gives sellers with higher quality products a more level playing field, but on the other hand, it makes getting genuine reviews increasingly hard. In this episode Dave and I talk about what you can do to generate reviews after Amazon banned incentivized reviews. We talk about all the possible ways to get reviews, i.e., legal ways, illegal ways, and those we think might be in the "gray area". We're not in any way encouraging you to use the "black hat" and "gray hat" ways of getting reviews--we simply want to give you some awareness and it's up to you to decide which strategies you want to use in your own business. The review strategies we discuss in this episode are all taken from Dave's blog post on How to Get Amazon Product Reviews in 2018. We also discuss which methods we actually use in our own businesses to provide examples. The strategies that we discuss in detail are the following: Amazon Early Reviewer Program Request Reviews from Customers Who Have Left Positive Seller Feedback Request Reviews from Customers You’ve Provided Customer Service To Friend and Acquaintance Reviews Product Inserts Discounted Products Launching Products to an Email List Review Grooming – How Small Sellers Dominate Large Sellers From the list you can clearly see which ones are definitely illegal in Amazon's TOS, but ironically those are the ones that are easiest to do. While getting reviews gets definitely tougher, keep in mind that the risks of using black hat strategies are far too great and the end results too costly. Resources mentioned: EcomCrew AMA Update on customer reviews How to Get Amazon Product Reviews in 2018 Do you have any questions about this episode? Just leave a comment down below or leave us a voice message. Thanks for listening! Until the next one, happy selling.

Amazon is the 800-pound gorilla in ecommerce and when they announce something new, it's bound to make the waves. But just in case Amazon news missed your inbox, Dave and I are here to recap them for you. This will be a recurring episode in the podcast with Dave and I regularly updating you with big and exciting announcements from Amazon. This series is going to be chock-full of value even if you're not selling on Amazon, as it seems that almost everything Amazon does tends to affect all of ecommerce. In this episode Dave and I talk about the following updates: 2018 Boost with FBA event on June 20th in New Orleans Inventory Performance Index and how to optimize your inventory Amazon App Store Amazon remarketing data Amazon media group New Amazon video ads In conjunction with Amazon updates, we're also excited to announce new stuff from EcomCrew. As part of our commitment to add new content every month, we will be releasing a course on Facebook Messenger in July. Sign up for an EcomCrew Premium membership to get access to this when it launches, plus access to ALL of our content--all of our courses, talks, webinars, spreadsheets, contacts, etc. If you're not sure about joining us yet but you need help with your business, just go to AMA (Ask Me Anything), ask us whatever question you have and I (or Dave) will answer your question and give you advice for free. Resources mentioned: Ask Me Anything EcomCrew Premium What is Amazon’s Inventory Performance Index & How Is It Calculated? Thanks for listening to this episode! If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!

Getting into ecommerce is tough--it's a low margin business and it's saturated with competition from big and small names alike. In order to break into the game you need to have a lot of resources, with cash being one of the most important. But when Katrina McKinnon started her ecommerce business 10 years ago, she didn't have a lot of money. There were already big names operating in her niche and not having money for paid traffic is a huge disadvantage. So she did what she knew she can do well--attract organic traffic using excellent content. In today's episode Katrina shares with us some SEO techniques she used to drive traffic to her content over the years in her business. These techniques are so effective that her business was able to afford her a nice house, nice cars, and good education for her kids--all through organic traffic. Here are some conversation points: How Katrina and I met Her background and how she started in ecommerce How Google is moving away from plain old search results How to leverage different types of content to get to the first page of Google's search results Image pack and featured snippets Aside from being an SEO expert, Katrina also works on connecting business owners with virtual assistants who are vetted and trained in ecommerce. She runs eCommerce University where aspiring virtual assistants learn about ecommerce. Successful graduates of the program are then vetted and listed on eCommerce Expert where business owners can hire them. If you're in need of someone to help you in your business without having to train them in ecommerce yourself, check out eCommerce Expert. Resources mentioned: Facebook Messenger Webinar EcomCrew Premium Schema App Thanks for listening to this episode! Until the next one, happy selling.

Last year Dave set out on a goal to rebuild another million dollar company in a span of one year. It has been a little more than 12 months since he set out with that goal, and today we have him on the podcast to talk about his results. Did he make it to that $1 million mark? Let's find out! But first, here's a bit of a backstory. In October 2016 Dave sold his first ecommerce company, which was doing just under $2 million in revenue per year. He had a number of reasons for selling his company but one of them was that he felt it would be easier to recreate a million dollar company using the knowledge he's gained running his first company over the past few years. He detailed his year-long journey building his second company in a blog post series you'll find here. In today's episode Dave and I talk about his journey, and whether he was successful in rebuilding a million dollar company or not. We also talk about the challenges he encountered along the way, and what his plans are moving forward. Some conversation points: How profit margins differ significantly during the first months of product development How much money a physical products business should devote to inventory Risk aversion His bad luck getting caught up in the effects of China's first big snowstorm in years How big he wants his business to grow Whether Dave succeeded in his goal or not, what he accomplished within 12 months is nothing short of amazing. It's a great example for those just starting in ecommerce, whether they want to reach $1 million in revenue within a year or not. Resources mentioned: EcomCrew Premium Part 1: Rebuilding a $1million Ecommerce and Importing Business from Scratch Part 2 – Rebuilding a $1m Ecommerce Business – Finding Products and Suppliers PART 3 – REBUILDING A $1M ECOMMERCE BUSINESS First 60 Day Results Part 4- Rebuilding a $1m Ecommerce Business – 6 Month Results Million Dollar Update – 12 Month Update Thanks for listening! If you have any questions about this episode, feel free to leave them below. Head on to EcomCrew Premium if you liked this episode and would want to get more content like this. We have courses, webinars, video tutorials and more to help you in your ecommerce business. Until the next episode, happy selling!

Explore the power of strategic planning for e-commerce success, focusing on how to set impactful one-year goals and quarterly priorities, or 'rocks.' Delve into aligning short-term objectives with a longer vision, including ambitious product launches and international expansion. Learn about optimizing Amazon listings and enhancing employee engagement through company perks. Discover innovative approaches to SKU management by phasing out slow-movers and maximizing efficiency. Get ready to supercharge your business with actionable insights!

Many of us starting on the ecommerce entrepreneur route debate between selling two types of products: physical or digital. It's relatively easy to demonstrate the value of a physical product, and it tends to evoke the feeling that you're running a real business. Physical products however require higher overhead, as you need ample amounts of inventory and money on shipping operations to keep the business running. On the other hand, digital products require almost no overhead and creating them doesn't tie up any money. On the downside, digital products are far more difficult to create and creation is very time-consuming. Between these two, what would be best for someone who wants to foray into ecommerce? Our answer - Both. In this episode Dave and I talk about how a combination of both physical and digital products is excellent for ecommerce businesses. We use Tactical.com and Coloring Club case studies to demonstrate this. In particular, we talk about the following: How Dave's entrepreneurial journey started with digital products How Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income inspired Dave to integrate digital products into his physical products business The challenges of selling digital products Types of digital products that are good complements to physical products The secret to creating home-run digital products Getting the help of experts and influencers to establish authority Tips and tricks for those who want to sell digital products This episode is a great way for us to officially announce our new membership plan called EcomCrew Premium. Over the past few months we've been releasing courses with individual pricing and we plan to keep on releasing new ones in the future, and selling content on a by-course basis has proven to be difficult and unscalable. We've been giving course discounts to those who bought our previous courses, and keeping track of who gets X amount of discount has become a bit of a headache. That has led to a decision to scrap the by-course pricing model and use a subscription model instead. With EcomCrew Premium you get access to ALL of our courses for a very cheap monthly price. Aside from that, you also get access to exclusive monthly webinars, monthly Q&A's, templates and swipe files. And of course, there's the private email coaching with both Mike and Dave so you can reach out to them anytime you hit a roadblock. Click here for more information about EcomCrew Premium. Resources mentioned: E117: How an MMA Fighter Built a Multi-Million Dollar Company Selling Digital Products EcomCrew Premium Tactical.com Coloring.club Thanks for listening! Until next week, happy selling.

While Amazon PPC is one of the most important tools for any Amazon seller, it's also one that's very expensive. It can potentially drain your profits if left unchecked. Case in point: In January we spent roughly $33,000 on Amazon PPC, generated sales amounting to around $104,000, with ACOS at 30%. Deducting Cost of Goods and other Amazon fees, we incurred a net loss of $537. You might ask what's the point of running ads if it's a loss anyway, and the answer is what I call the "Amazon flywheel effect". It's okay for me to take a hit on profits if it means getting more traffic and better conversions, because in the long run it will get me better search positions, in turn driving more sales. While I'm generally okay with this, it would be nice to get the same results with a little less money--even if just to break even. So early this year I decided to sit down and take a good hard look at our PPC campaigns and see if there's something we can do to save some money here and there. What resulted is an Amazon PPC strategy that after a couple of months of implementation resulted in the rough stats below: Spend: $25,000 Sales: $103,000 ACOS: 24.1% and dropping Net profits: $6000 Yes, you read that right. We actually gained profits when we implemented this Amazon PPC strategy. The beauty of it is this strategy does not require you to monitor PPC campaigns all the time. You don't even have to do this yourself. We assigned one of our Filipino VAs to this task and it just takes her a couple of hours per week. One of the tools that hugely helped us achieve this is Sellics. We trained our VA and taught her how to use the software and it has helped her drastically reduce the time needed to monitor our PPC campaigns. Click here to explore Sellics (affiliate link). In this episode I discuss how we were able to do this and how you can do it too. This episode is quite technical and we might do a screencast in the future to better explain the numbers in our Amazon PPC strategy. Subscribe to our Youtube channel to get updates. Resources mentioned: Million Dollar Sellers Sellics (affiliate link) EcomCrew Youtube channel Thanks for listening! If you have any questions, feel free to comment below.

For those who missed Monday's episode, David Wilson is our Under the Hood guest who enjoyed massive sales growth right before suddenly experiencing a plateau. He tried regaining growth by increasing ad spend, to the point that his profits were in danger of drying up. He needs cost-effective ways to get his sales back on pace, and that is what we talk about in this episode. On Monday's episode, David and I talked about the basic things he needs to take care of before he can move on to actual growth strategies, which is delegation. We talked about his need to hire VAs and let Amazon FBA handle his inventory so he can have some free time to focus on high-level tasks that only he can do. Today we get into the "meat and potatoes"--the actual strategies David needs to employ to boost his sales. In particular we talk about the following, among others: Improving product photography Utilizing all listing image space provided by Amazon Using infographics Shooting lifestyle videos and photos Enhanced brand content Running promotions and giveaways Choosing a modern Shopify theme Utilizing influencer marketing Expanding to Amazon EU and Canada I hope you got valuable practical advice from my conversation with David. If you'd like to get a one-on-one coaching session with me and be featured on the podcast, join our Under the Hood program here. Resources mentioned: Splitly Famebit SimplyVAT Pacific Customs Brokers Thanks for listening! Until next week, happy selling.

Massive growth is not uncommon for ecommerce businesses. We, for instance, doubled our revenue every year since we started in 2015. With this kind of trend it becomes very unsettling for most ecommerce business owners if sales suddenly remain the same month after month, even if that sales number is high. This is what today's Under the Hood guest is going through. David Wilson had been enjoying massive growth when his sales suddenly plateaud--not increasing and not decreasing, just remaining more or less the same every month. His ads no longer worked, paid search was no longer effective, and his cost per acquisition skyrocketed. His business was in danger of losing profits if he kept doing the same things over and over. David needs cost-effective ways to expand sales and that is the topic for this Under the Hood session. For this episode David and I talk about the first action he urgently needs to do: delegation. Much of his time is tied up on small day to day tasks and he needs to free up time to spend on higher-level tasks that will help recover the growth of his business. In particular, we talk about hiring VAs and using Amazon FBA for fulfillment, two of the lowest-hanging fruit in terms of delegation. In addition, we also talk about the following: David's consulting session with me and Grant in the past His professional background and how he got into ecommerce How his business started plateauing after experiencing massive growth What he does on a day-to-day basis This is just the first part of our coaching session. In Part 2 we get into the meat and potatoes--the specific actions David needs to do to scale his business and gain back his previous growth. These are things that can easily be done, from improving product photography to using a new Shopify theme. Part 2 will come out on Thursday. If you liked this episode and would like to have your own personalized business advice for free and be featured in the podcast, sign up for Under the Hood here. Resources mentioned: Amazon product launch strategy webinar Under the Hood Thanks for listening! Just comment below if you have questions or advice for David, and get a chance to win an EcomCrew branded mug. Until the next episode, happy selling!

Here's something you don't hear about very often: me and Dave sitting side by side on a train heading to China talking about EcomCrew. With me being based in the US and Dave in Canada (and Dave most recently living in China for the last 8 months), communication has not been very easy. We had to deal with time zones and dropped calls, making it hard for Dave to be on the podcast with me (he doesn't like being on the podcast very often in the first place, making it a lot harder). Our trip to Asia was very productive not just for our respective businesses but for EcomCrew as well, as it gave time for me and Dave to be in the same place and talk about EcomCrew in real time. One of these moments was during a train ride from Hong Kong to Guangzhou on our way to the Canton Fair. We decided to record our conversation amidst train noises in the background for your listening pleasure. Here are some conversation points: Our speaking engagements at the Global Sources Summit How well the first EcomCrew mastermind turned out The Canton Fair we're headed to Our Gentleman's bet Using Jungle Scout not to find products but to do something else Exciting new EcomCrew stuff Despite the backgound noise of train hums and Chinese chatter, this train ride has been an enjoyable experience--Dave and I even made a gentleman's bet on something in relation the Global Sources Summit. Watch out for the results of the bet in the coming episodes! Resources mentioned: Amazon launch strategy webinar E102: Amazon Product Launch Strategy for 2018 How to Launch a New Brand and Product on Amazon to a New Best Seller E127: The Importance of Masterminds on Business and Personal Life Thanks for listening! Did you find our conversation interesting? Comment below and get a chance to win a free mug!