You may find this surprising, but Dave and I don’t have a dedicated phone support for our respective businesses.
Well, we used to.
Dave’s first ecommerce business had it for five days a week. I used to have 24/7 customer support via telephone for treadmill.com. We also had it for a while here on Terran until late last year. After the person who did this for us sent in his notice, we finally decided to remove it permanently in the last week of December 2017.
So, why did we turn the phone off? Mostly because it was just too much effort for very little money. In Terran’s case, we found that we were actually losing money. Dave sold his first ecommerce business in 2016. When he started another one, he consciously made the decision to do away with phone support altogether.
That depends. There are businesses that benefit, even need, phone support to obtain leads that will convert into sales. However, for a transactional volume business like ours, it's hard to justify in that vacuum.
Turning off the phone allowed us to focus on other customer support methods. We think email is the best of the lot. It’s easy to outsource (i.e. our team in the Philippines answers customer emails, along with other tasks) so that brings the cost down. Unlike a ringing phone, it’s easier to resist the lure of the inbox.
In addition to email, EcomCrew utilizes a few other channels to help out both students and non-students. We answer questions via Messenger and on the EcomCrew Premium Facebook group. We also host three webinars each month where participants can interact with us and ask questions. You can register for the next one using the link below.
Importing From China: Everything You Need to Know
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Sign up here and get insights on how you can grow your business.
As always, thanks for listening to this episode! If you enjoyed listening and think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes.
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!
By the time this podcast airs, part 1 of the latest round of tariff increases would have taken effect. Approved by President Trump on September 17th, it effectively slaps a 10% tariff on $200 billion in Chinese goods. Part 2 will be another 25% increase expected to take effect on New Year’s Day 2019.
In just the same year, the Trump Administration has announced three tariff increases. Here are the details on the first two.
In response to this attack, the Chinese government provided a counterpunch by adding a 5% to 10% on $60 billion of US goods including meat, chemicals, clothes and auto parts.
The move only served to escalate tension between these two economic giants. Unfortunately, since round 3 covers just about everything imported from China that’s being processed and sold on US shores, it’s the little guys who are caught in the middle.
In this episode, Dave and I discuss the implications of these new tariffs on our respective businesses, what our preparations are for its coming, and what our predictions are for these new regulations in light of the November 6 midterm elections.
Here’s a rundown of some of the things that we discussed.
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If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!
Over the past few weeks we've been posting updates on Chinese sellers manipulating Amazon. While black-hat practices are particularly pronounced in China, not all Chinese sellers rely on these methods to be successful on Amazon.
In this episode we are joined by Zack Franklin of AMZKungfu. Zack currently lives in Shenzhen, China, and he is a popular consultant for Chinese Amazon sellers. He has worked with a number of big Chinese companies helping them with marketing, software, and training. These companies rack up $150+ million in revenue individually, with one even getting acquired for more than $1 billion.
The majority of sellers Zack works with do not rely on shady business practices. While many of us attribute the success of Chinese sellers to black-hat practices, Zack argues that successful Chinese sellers are doing a couple of things we are not... and these are not TOS violations.
One glaring difference between the Chinese and westerners is their work culture. The Chinese practice the so-called 9-9-6, which means that people work from 9AM to 9PM, 6 days a week. It's not uncommon for Chinese sellers to keep working into the night without a day off, until they see their products on page 1 of Amazon search results.
The Chinese also work very fast. Most of the companies Zack works with have their own photography studio so they could get images for listings blazingly fast.
If there's one thing we'd like you to take away from the episode, it's this: you can get 400 clicks to your Amazon listing for only $30 with Google Ads. Zack's clients were able to leverage a very simple technique to get PPC costs down and he talks about how to do it in detail in this episode.
He also talks about YouTube pre-roll ads, best ad practices, and the virtues of not giving discounts to customers too early.
Another tool in Zack's arsenal is Facebook Messenger. His clients find it to be a great way to get reviews and continue interacting with customers. If you want to know how we grew our Facebook subscribers to 50,000 people in less than a year, join our free Facebook Messenger webinar on September 25th.
Zack emphasizes the importance of meeting up with fellow Amazon sellers in order to learn from them. Chinese sellers are very aware of this and use it to their advantage.
If you want to reach out to Zack, you can do so by going to his website at amzkungfu.com, or emailing him at zack.f.pro@gmail.com
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Thanks for listening to this episode! Until the next one, happy selling.
I always look forward to joining ecommerce conferences. It’s a great place to meet up with old friends and network with new people. Many of those I’ve met at these events have become guests on this podcast. Phil Leahy is no different.
An ecommerce veteran, he built one of the largest eBay businesses retailing CDs & DVDs. He was the #1 eBay seller in Australia for a number of years. Somewhere along the way, he founded the Retail Global conference. Today, his company Retail Global Events is hosting these conferences in Australia and the United States.
Phil and I met at the Global Sources Summit in Hong Kong. He approached me after my presentation and invited me to come and speak at Retail Global Las Vegas next month. In turn, I’ve asked him to come on the show to give us information about this much-awaited gathering of ecommerce influencers, sellers, and online marketplace representatives.
With that, here are some takeaways from the talk that we had.
Retail Global, formerly known as The Internet Conference, started around 13 years ago to address the need of having a local conference in Australia where online sellers can share information freely. Its initial aim was to help people sell successfully on eBay but has since morphed into ecommerce, eventually including discussions and workshops for today’s biggest marketplace, Amazon. It wasn’t until four years ago when Phil was able to bring Retail Global to American shores. The year 2012 marked the first Retail Global Las Vegas conference.
Now more than a decade later, both Retail Global conferences in Australia and the United States are attended by hundreds of ecommerce entrepreneurs from across the globe. The biggest influencers and success stories in the industry speak at these events.
We wrap up this session with Phil offering listeners a simple ecommerce tip but with the potential to have a massive impact. He urges other online sellers to include a small gift when shipping out a customer’s purchase. “Surprise, delight, aftersale and don’t advertise it.” he says.
Retail Global Las Vegas will be happening at Planet Hollywood on October 9-11. Use the code for ECOM200 to get $200 off your ticket.
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As always, thanks for listening to this episode! If you enjoyed listening and think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes.
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to sell on Amazon.
I know I share the same sentiment with many listeners of this podcast. These days, you need to position your brand in a way that it can effectively differentiate itself. Only then will you be able to sell products effectively. So it’s downright frustrating and disheartening when you encounter imitators online who hijack and duplicate products for monetary gain but at the original creator's expense.
That being said, it’s crucial to have your brand and your products protected by a trademark. And in today’s podcast, we not only get to pick the brains of a lawyer who assists clients with protecting their brands. He also has his own ecommerce business to boot.
Steven Weigler is someone who’s certainly seen both sides of the coin. A former prosecutor and technology law practitioner, he has been running an ecommerce business for a decade. He is also the founder of EmergeCounsel, a business legal services provider.
Steve sheds light on what a trademark is and how many different kinds are there. He also talks about the Amazon Brand Registry and a relatively new program within it called Transparency.
Here are some highlights from our discussion.
On that note, EmergeCounsel has a business service package that’s right up this alley. For an $875 all-in fee you can get the following:
For more information, you can get in touch with Steve via his email address: sweigler@emergecounsel.com
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Give us your 5 Minute Pitch and Win $50,000
Thanks for listening to this episode! If you enjoyed listening and think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes.
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!
During our last visit to Montreal to film new course videos, we came upon a new gathering for Amazon sellers called the Orange Hat Summit. Unfortunately we weren't able to actually join the summit due to time constraints but we did meet a Chinese seller who was a speaker at the summit. Ours was one of the most brutal conversations I had, and it spawned an article written by Dave, and this podcast episode.
Although we were already familiar of the nefarious acts done by some sellers on Amazon, our conversation gave light to just how heinous some of these strategies are.
We should point out though that these tactics are not exclusive to Chinese sellers, but it is with little doubt that China is often at the forefront of formulating these strategies.
The following strategies are the most commonly used by Chinese sellers:
Some sellers have upwards of 20 accounts, some even under the name of their employees. This pads the risk of Amazon suspension--as one account gets closed, they just set up shop using another one.
Chinese sellers know that reviews = sales. Some sellers do something as innocent as rewarding buyers for 5-star reviews, while others buy reviews from review farms outright. Worse, however, is how they buy fake negative reviews against their competitors' products.
This one is the biggie. We've heard of Chinese sellers using stolen buyer addresses in America to send them products as part of a fake review campaign, but we had no idea just how huge this strategy has become. Apparently, you can pay some rogue Chinese Amazon employee (or someone who has access to a rogue employee) and request reports on any buyer AND seller. If a seller can find out certain information about a competitor’s product, such as their sales and page view history, it can be extremely valuable.
All these strategies has made the playing field extremely unfair, especially when Amazon doesn't seem to care at all. Add to this the fact that Chinese sellers don't have the pressure of sales taxes, don't have to conform to high safety and quality standards, and are pretty much immune from lawsuits, and the entire Amazon atmosphere looks pretty depressing for the average American seller.
With everything that's happening, it's tempting for any seller to try to dip their toes into the realm of black-hat strategies. But we know that a business built on sketchiness will not last long, and if and when Amazon finally drops the hammer, those who play by the rules will be left standing.
If you want an in-depth detail of these strategies and how Chinese sellers pull it off, make sure to read this blog post written by Dave.
Thanks for tuning in to this episode. Until the next one, happy selling.
It takes more than a great idea to achieve success in the ecommerce ecosystem. As Ryan O’Connor will tell you, there have been plenty of hits and misses after he got his ‘lightbulb moment’ four years ago. Ryan is the co-founder of One Tribe Apparel and the guest for today’s Under the Hood segment. His goal is to boost monthly revenue so that he can transition to doing the business full time. He’s also looking for insights on how to launch new products successfully, particularly now that the company is selling on Amazon FBA. He also runs an SEO consulting business.
Ryan and I followed the same trajectory early in our ecommerce career. Playing poker also led him to affiliate marketing and by 2008 he had a small poker site. But it wasn’t until 2014, while leading the life of a digital nomad in Thailand, that he got the idea that has now evolved into a bohemian apparel and accessories company.
One Tribe Apparel is an LLC company that started in 2014. Ryan originally started selling his Thai inspired pants through an online store created on the Big Commerce platform. The following year he moved to Shopify. Today, One Tribe Apparel also has merchandise on Etsy and Amazon, with 25 wholesale accounts. From an initial revenue of $2,500, the company capped 2017 with $200,000 in revenue with 50% net margin.
In the past year or so, One Tribe Apparel has been adding new products to expand its existing line and boost revenue but the efforts have been unsuccessful. Ryan personally would like revenue to reach half a million USD to justify working on the business full time. He also wants to do a serious Amazon launch as there’s potential demand for yoga accessories in the marketplace.
After getting a sense of where his business is at, here are some of my recommendations
Thanks for listening to this episode! If you enjoyed listening and think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes.
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!
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Under the Hood is a segment where we do an hour-long coaching call with one of our listeners. We take a look at their businesses, provide honest feedback, offer our best business advice, and answer whatever questions they have. In exchange for the free coaching, we will turn the call into a podcast episode so that our community can benefit as well. It’s a win-win!