British Amazon Seller

Once again we have with us Brian Johnson of PPC Scope and Sponsored Products Academy. Today we will be talking about Amazon Marketing Services. Brian Johnson of PPC Scope If you haven’t already, please listen to the first two parts of this interview, where we address PPC for Amazon Seller Central. Just head on over to amazingfba.com/brianj for all the episodes as well as some great resources, including Brian's proprietory PPC Cheatsheet. Amazon Marketing Services Brian is going to teach us how to hack into your competitors’ listings, and ethically steal their traffic and sales. Sounds crazy, right? There is an Amazon platform that most people are not aware of called Amazon Marketing Services, AMS. It’s the banner ads that appear above every ad when you search on Amazon. It’s the ads below the “Add to Cart” button on a listing. Amazon Marketing Services is a gated advertising platform where you have to meet certain qualifications to join. Once you do, you get much higher visibility, much lower cost-per-click, and you can target your competitors and defend your own brand by having ads on product pages. It’s below their description and offers you the ability to show off your product to their customers. Get Started with Amazon Marketing Services AMS is gated by Vendor Express.  Once you get past the stage where you send Amazon a sample order, then you can begin using Amazon Marketing Services. For Free video training from Brian, click on the video image below: Once you’re in, you have to structure your AMS ads to proper way to make sure you pack a punch. It doesn’t work the same way as sponsored products. AMS has three aspects: Headline search ads which are the ads at the top of the search results. Product display ads which are below the add to cart button. Sponsored Products ads which are not the same as the sponsored ads we’re used to and they show up in different locations than the classic sponsored products. The best case scenario is to use both types of sponsored products. You can use AMS to help filter down keywords based on what Amazon thinks will be relevant. There are ways to streamline the process of getting approved for Vendor Express. However, that would be way more than we could cover on this episode. It is something Brian teaches in his course. Many people are confused about what you can advertise for on AMS. They think you can only show ads for products you submit through Vendor Express. That is not the case. You are only using the product to get approval. AMS allows you to show ads for all your products. Brian’s course covers all that and more. Brian will teach you how to get started, how to get un-gated, and how to make the process very simple. Get More Information The best place to get more info is in Brian's free training at Sponsored Product Academy. There are 4 free videos about this whole area. Just click on the video image below to access that: The Academy full course itself It is very in-depth training. It’s about a 5-week course. It’s the best place to start if you want to dominate your competitors in advertising. You can start with the free videos and take it from there.  For the cheat sheet and other resources, including instant access to training videos, just visit the link below:  amazingfba.com/brianj Watch Amazon Marketing Services with Brian Johnson Part 3 of 3

We are continuing our conversation with Brian Johnson of Sponsored Product Academy (& PPC Scope) to discuss how to simplify your Amazon PPC. If you haven’t listened to the first part, you really need to. Simply because if you are selling on Amazon, Brian gave us a ton of useful, mindblowing information that will change the way your thing of sponsored ads. Do yourself a favor, and go listen to part one.  Amazon PPC the Wrong Way One mistake many sellers make is that they don’t structure their campaigns properly. They want to think that they can set up the campaign, and let it run. If you want to do the bare minimum and ignore any other aspect, there are a couple of things you should do.   You’ll want to set up and automatic campaign with a low bid. Probably, no more that $0.30. Each variation of the product should be separated into their own ad groups within the campaign. With the low bids you’re likely to turn a profit with any product. This is the simplest way, you relinquish all control. You probably won’t get many sales or impact your organic positioning, but it’s better than nothing. For more tips on what not to do, check out Brian’s training videos. Amazon PPC the Right Way If you want to do it correctly, you need to structure your campaign properly. That way you can read how the audience responds to the ads for each of your products. Advertising only affects about 10-15% of sales Amazon PPC Goals Most people don’t had an advertising plan. They just want to get to page one and thinks ads are the way to do it. Advertising only affects about 10-15% of sales. So if you’re on page 10, advertising isn’t going to get you to page 1. That’s just not realistic. A realistic goal for PPC would be to learn the audience so that you can position your product. You have to go back and identify the search terms that are showing your ads, that brings a shopper into your listing and converts to a sale. If you don’t know the terminology your audience is using, how do you target it? You need to learn the terminology your audience is using, then you can focus your listing to target that audience. If you do that, you are more likely to have a higher organic search position. Sometimes your ad campaign will be profitable and that’s great. Run with it, expand it as much as possible. Other times, you might find that you're losing money because it’s too expensive and not converting. However, that may not be a failed campaign because you can still learn from it. If, through advertising, it is raising your organic listing, then it could be profitable that way. Using Amazon PPC for Product Positioning So the next question is, how do you take what you learned from your campaign and use it for better organic search position? Through your Amazon PPC campaign you learned different search terms that draws shoppers into your listing. You might find that you convert really well on 5 of those search terms. However, you might find that only 2 of them have low enough competition that you have the chance to rank really high in them. If you tailor your listing to search terms that have low competition, it gives you a better chance of positioning your product higher in the niche search terms that you know convert. For Free video training from Brian, click on the video image below: Keyword Stuffing An old technique that used to work very well, was keyword stuffing. That is when you take every keyword that anyone might find your product through, and stuff them into your listing. The idea was that you could boost your ranking for all these keywords by just having them in the listing. Around mid-2016 Amazon changed the way they view relevancy and content matching when it came to keyword advertising. Before, they used a broad match search where they took all the words in your listing and matched them with the search terms. Now they also factor in phrase match, where if you have the exact phrase the buyer searched for,

  Brian Johnson of Sponsored Products Academy Today we have Brian Johnson of Sponsored Product Academy (& PPC Scope) to talk to us about PPC and the REAL reason for the  end of Amazon incentivized reviews. This is a guy that has been in ecommerce industry for years. He started out selling banking equipment on eBay for seven years before a friend pulled him into Amazon. He began launching his own private label products. This was about three years ago when Amazing Selling Machine launched. Soon after that he got in touch with a large company that was struggling on the Amazon platform and needed help. Brian slowly shifted into doing more consulting work once he saw the demand there. He found that the greatest need came down to visibility. He needed to do more marketing which meant Pay-per-click Amazon ads. Once he began researching Amazon PPC, he found that there simply wasn’t enough information out there. He decided he had to teach himself. Like many entrepreneurs, his success came about solving the problems he faced. End of Amazon Incentivized Reviews In October of 2016, Amazon announced the end of Amazon incentivized reviews. Sellers could no longer give products away in exchanged for a review. This was a major change because, until that point, incentivized reviews was the biggest ways for Amazon sellers to launch new products. In their press release, Amazon cited the reasons as wanting to improve the user experience. Which makes sense because so many reviews were fake. This started a bit of a frenzy among Amazon sellers. No one really knew where to go from there. It soon became clear that the best way forward was to focus on Amazon PPC. Sellers began to turn their attention, and their sole attention, to Amazon ads in order to drive traffic. It didn’t take long for Amazon PPC costs to begin to rise. Brian did some research and realized that the cost increase began about a week after Amazon’s announcement. It became quite clear that this was the new norm and not simply temporary spike. Amazon sellers began seeing advertising costs increased by as much as 5-10%. For Free video training from Brian, click on the video image below: Amazon’s Benefit It may have not been Amazon’s main intention for the end of Amazon incentivized reviews, but they did see a major increase in profit because of it. In the course of his research Brian saw that you were still able to use Amazon Vine. This is Amazon’s programme for paid reviews. Instead of using a third party option, you could pay to use Amazon’s program which starts at $2500 a product. Brain also found that Amazon makes a lot of money from PPC. Over a billions dollars a year. With PPC costs rising by 5-10%, that’s a lot of money Amazon made by eliminating Amazon incentivized reviews. How to Sell in a Post-Incentivized Review World You don’t want to get swept up in the Amazon PPC craze. Everyone is moving to PPC, they are flooding the market, and driving up costs. You need to figure out how to sell in a 2017 Amazon. Don’t Do List Don’t listen to seller support. One of the biggest mistakes Brian is seeing is following the wrong advice. They call up Seller Support which tells them to run one campaign and increase their bid. These reps are not trained property and they simply give bad advice. They don’t understand how the platform works. This works well for Amazon. They make more money and can quickly clear out their support tickets. It doesn’t work well for sellers that can afford to waste a lot of money by throwing it away in Amazon ads. Click here for video training on this. Best Practices Amazon PPC is a complex system. There is not one size fits all. Each product is different. They have different customers, different click through rates, so you have to run a solid PPC campaign. Not only does Amazon look at your products, but they also look at the customers. Sometimes they will show your ads to audiences that are related to your prod...

A lot of us sellers do while label existing products. It’s important that you don’t inadvertently break IP laws and get into Amazon legal issues. The best option is to hire a lawyer to run a search on that product. They will give you an opinion as to whether or not that product is likely to be problematic. To further protect yourself you want to add in a feature that no one else can deliver. For example, a membership program. If you’re selling a generic product, every quarter your members will get a newsletter where they can log into a system and get exclusive content. If you’re selling yoga pants, you can include a fitness routine. While the pants may be generic, that fitness routine is copyright. Avoiding Patent Issues There is a general rule that if you take a patented product, change something about it, it is no longer covered by the patent. For the most part that is true, at least for simple products. For more complex products, it may not hold up. An example is that Apple and Samsung have been battling for years over patented technology. While the phone was different, Samsung had used some patented technology in their phones. Be sure to consult an IP attorney on your products to avoid legal issues. Amazon Legal Issues Having a Limited company in the UK offers protection against liabilities. It prevents your personal assets being used to compensate legal issues for your company. If you’re doing business in the US, you’ll want to register your company in at least one US state. This should offer you some legal protections for your UK based company. It is highly recommended that you have a general liability policy to protect your company's’ losses should your product hurt somebody. If your company is a legal entity, like a Limited company or a LLC in the US, this will protect your personal assets. Product liability insurance is always a good idea to protect you from Amazon legal issues, but how vital it is depends on your product. If you’re selling t-shirts, the likelihood of somebody getting hurt is pretty low. However, if you’re selling those hoverboards that blew up, then the risk is much higher. Amazon Account Suspension Insurance There is a new type of insurance that is coming onto the market that protects you in case you run into Amazon legal issues and are dealing with account suspension. There are three types of insurance dealing with the different types of Amazon sellers. That is private label, wholesale, and retail arbitrage. There are different rates for each type of seller. It helps cover money lost when your account is suspended. They give you $500 to pay for Amazon Sellers Lawyer or another attorney to help with your plan of action. If you don’t get reinstated in 120 hours, they start paying your lost profits. Risk vs Reward One mistake people often make is that they don’t take the need of insurance seriously. The chances of your product injuring someone or of your getting sued is slim. However, if it were to happen, the reward for having insurance is astronomical. These insurance policy protect you in two ways. The first is that they cover the cost of the liability called indemnity. If your product were to burn someone’s house down like the hoverboard did, insurance would cover that payout. They will also provide a lawyer to defend you. These legal fees can become tens of thousands of dollars in the blink of an eye. Watch Amazon Legal Issues with CJ Rosenbaum Part 2 of 3

Today’s show is something that I feel is long overdue. I am always getting legal questions when it comes to selling on Amazon. We have with us CJ Rosenbaum, the founder of Amazon Sellers Lawyer, to help answer some questions about Amazon account suspension. CJ has been representing entrepreneurs ever since he graduated from law school. He got started with Amazon sellers after client started investigating buying an Amazon based business. After the client managed to buy the business, he immediately had issues with Amazon account suspension and ASINs getting knocked off. He came to CJ because when he tried to find someone for legal help and the only people in the industry were non-lawyer consultant types that didn’t know much about being a seller. CJ has always enjoyed the challenge of working with entrepreneurs. When he looked into, he found that there were really no lawyers involved. So he jumped in with both feet. He went from doing nothing but trying cases in court, to solely focusing on Amazon entrepreneurs. He has grown to four lawyers and six staff in New York. If you use Amazon Sellers Lawyer to handle your Amazon account suspension issue, you’ll know that whoever works on your case is a college educated paralegal. They are opening offices in London and Dublin and are looking to open an office in Mumbai. They have an office open in Shenzhen, China, with plans to expand into Guangzhou and Dongguan. Amazon Account Suspension The number fear of any Amazon seller is an Amazon account suspension. Not picking a bad product. Not shipping issues. It’s getting that email that Amazon has suspended your account, they’re holding your money and charging you storage fees. Account suspension can be divided into two categories: non-intellectual property and intellectual property suspension. Non-intellectual property suspension is from late shipments, bad feedback, etc, and are not really legal issues. The other half is solely intellectual property. This is another brand complaining about you as a seller and doing a sweep of their listings claiming your violating intellectual property laws. About 95%-98% of the IP, intellectual property, claims, in the US, are entirely baseless. They are bogus complaints meant to thwart competition. These are coming from major brands like Wal-Mart, Samsung, Major League Baseball and other companies from around the world. CJ and his team stand up to these companies. Almost every time, these brands withdraw their complaints. Amazon Sellers Lawyer don’t charge outrageous fees for this service. If you hire a lawyer to defend you in court, it can quickly cost you tens of thousands of dollars. CJ is looking to get you back to selling without charging you an arm and a leg to do so. Amazon Account Suspension from Non-IP Complaints These are not really legal issues, it has more to do with Amazon’s internal regulation. They come from customer complaints about late shipments, bad feedback, and the like. The first step is to write a plan of action if you find that your account has been suspended because of a non-IP complaint. A plan of action is a practice in persuasive writing. You’re trying to persuade the person at Amazon to reinstate your selling privileges, rather than asking for more information or saying no. As lawyers, CJ and his team are trained to identify issues and write persuasively. Writing a Plan of Action There are three parts to a plan of action. Part 1 The root cause. This doesn’t mean admitting to doing something wrong that you didn’t do. You don’t have to admit to wrongdoing if you didn’t actually do something wrong. The root cause can usually be something that you can do better to avoid a customer getting a product that they feel is not authentic. You need to look into your account and figure out what cause the customer or Amazon to have an issue with your account. Part 2 The immediate corrective action that you took.

Get Started with Splitly The first thing to do when you get started with Splitly is to sync your Amazon account with Splitly. Splitly will then organize your products based on the best selling products. It also provides a hint as to what product you should start with. It will offer suggestions for each listing before you even start testing. For instance, if you are only using 5 of your 9 images, it will alert you. Images and Pricing The best place to start, when you’re ready to test, is with images and pricing. These are the easiest tests to run without much effort, and give very good results. Bear in mind that these are general suggestions and it will vary person to person. Even if you’re not willing or able to get new images of your products, you can still test you main image. Simply test one of your other images as your main. Pricing is another great test to run as long as you’re changing the price significantly. If you’re only adjusting is by $1, you’re not likely to see much improvement. However, if you alter it by $5, you’re probably going to see a large difference. The best technique is to start wide, and narrow down through testing. Let’s say you're testing $19.99 against $21.99, and you find that you get better results with $21.99. The next thing is to try $20.99 against $22.99 and see what performs better. Splitly Features One thing to keep in mind is how Amazon does it’s search results. Google isn’t going to boost a page in its results because it’s selling well. Amazon does. This is probably the single greatest factor in search ranking. So if you’re testing different price points, you will want to go with the one that has higher sales. Since this can complicate the test results, they released a new feature called Profit Beak. With this feature, you set the minimum and maximum price for the product. The software will then update your listing every hour, and try a different price point. This allows Splitly to gather data much faster and they can determine the best price based on profit and sales. You can adjust it so it focuses on one or the other. It can also test multiple other factors including keyword ranking and conversion. Keyword rank tracking is a standard piece of software that most people are familiar with. Now, you can tie it into Profit Beak. You can then tell the software that you don’t want to fall below number 10 on a keyword, and that become a new floor. So during testing, Splitly will monitor that and keep it ranked high enough. What You Can Test At its core, Splitly is a testing suite. When you get started with Splitly , the possibilities are endless. Unlike other tools, the software create more work for you because now you have to think of different ideas of how to tweak your listing. However, in the end, it will make you more money. You can test a title that is packed with keywords against one that isn’t. This is really useful because the effects happen quickly. You can see your ranking change within 10 or 20 minutes. It’s very useful if you’re testing your keywords. Your bullet points are another great test because it’s never easy to figure out the best way to go about it. It’s best not to stuff keywords in your bullet points. It’s best used for selling to potential buyers. You can look at the negative reviews of your competitors, and address those concerns in the bullets. Then you can split test them to figure out the best way to do it. How to reach Andrew Browne There is a lot of great resources at splitly.com. You can email them at [email protected] as well as a live chat where you can ask them any questions you may have about the product. Watch How to Get Started with Splitly with Andrew Browne Part 2 of 2

Split testing is a technique you can use to test which variation performs better. It’s very common in web design. An online store may want to find which color checkout button converts the best. They would then show half their audience one colour, and the rest another and track conversion rates. It’s very important to split test your Amazon listing to help optimise it. Split Test your Amazon Listing Andrew Browne co-founded Splitly as a way to use this technique with Amazon listings. This way you are able to test different aspects of your listing, to fine-tune every feature so it converts as good as it can. You can test different main images and title to find out which gets better traction. This uses objective data rather than your subjected intuition. Best Place when Getting Started Main Image It is the first thing your customers see therefore has a major impact on getting potential buyers’ attention. If you split test your Amazon listing image, you can determine the best picture that will get people to click on your product. One success story that Andrew shared was one he did on his own product. He wasn’t looking for results, he was merely testing the software. In doing so, he found that by changing the main image, to one he thought were do poorly, he improved his conversion rate by 50%. Price Another great place to start is your price. It’s easy to test and is incredibly impactful on your conversion and you can get your results quickly. Other places to test are your title, bullets, and product description. Split Test Your Amazon Listing with Splitly Splitly is an amazing tool that does the split testing for you. When your start you test, your listing updates at midnight, Amazon time, which is GMT-8. The reason for that is Amazon does your reports based on that time. Then every night at midnight, you listing updates with the other version of your listing. While it’s not true AB testing, it’s the best you can do with Amazon’s limitations, and it’s better than using your own intuition. Which Products to Split Test It’s important to understand that split testing isn’t for saving products. If you have a failing product, it won’t help to split test to try and save it. You need to have enough traffic in order to get enough data to make improvements. You want to split test products that are already doing well in order to improve them and boost them a few percent. You’re looking to improve upon products that are already getting traffic and sales. Timeline for Testing How long it takes to split test a listing depends on a few factors. The more sales your product gets, the quicker you’ll get your results. If you’re selling 5 units a day, Splitly will be able to collect enough data much quicker than if you’re selling 1 unit a day. The significance of the difference places a large factor. If you’re testing a price difference of 5 cents, it might not affect the sales enough to determine a winner. Whereas if you’re testing a $5 difference, it will have a larger effect and the software will be able to determine which is better. There is no specific number, it just depends on how long it takes Splitly to gather enough data to give you an answer. It may determine that there isn’t enough difference to go one way or another. Watch How to Split Test your Amazon Listing with Andrew Browne Part 1 of 2

The great thing about running an Amazon business is the freedom it allows in your personal life. You can go on holiday as you want and you can take a day off as needed. You set your own schedule and make your own deadlines. That also creates one of the more difficult aspects of your job as an Amazon seller, time management. Today on the show we have David Aggiss and we’ll be discussing time management techniques when you’re running an online business. Time Management for eCommerce If you are first starting out, the challenge is finding enough time to work on your business. You have your full-time job, maybe a spouse and children, then your Amazon business on top of that. It’s going to lead to some late nights and long days. That’s the struggle of it. It’s important to set aside time-blocks for specific tasks. If you start working without this, you’ll end up working on a number of things and accomplishing nothing. Customer service is a daily task. You’re probably going to be in Seller Central a lot anyway, which is a good thing so you can respond to customer questions and other issues as they arise. Once a week, you want to look at your listings. See if there is any way to improve them. You should take a look at your PPC and keywords to make sure they are performing how you want. Time Management when Expanding Your Business Expanding your business is an evening job. If you are looking to research new product lines or find new suppliers, make sure you have a few weeks available where you can put in some serious evening hours. You’re going to have to work everyday with emails back and forth with your suppliers, especially if they’re in China. Unless you can get on a Skype call, this process could take a week or more because of the time difference. Skype is recommended to help speed up this exchange. However, keep in mind that if you’re looking into several suppliers, that Skype could get overwhelming. It is easier to maintain all the information if you limit it to email since that has understood, built-in limitations. Also, you will have a record of everything discussed. Outsourcing If you find that you don’t have the time to handle everything that you need, consider outsourcing. Be aware of what your strengths and weaknesses are. Focus on your strengths, outsource your weaknesses. If you are making enough money from your Amazon business that you can afford to outsource, then you are probably pretty proficient at the day-to-day Amazon tasks. Then you’ll want to continue to handle those. If your background is in web design, then build your website yourself. If, however, you don’t know the first thing about building a website and you have no idea how to work on social media, outsource those. Chances are you can find someone that will do it better and faster. If a task is going to take you a week, but someone who is an expert can do it in a day, pay them to do it. The task will get done several days soon and you now have that week to work on something you’re an expert in. Focus Management While time management is important, focus management is as well. Like I said before, you have the freedom to make your own schedule, but you don’t have a boss to keep you on track. It’s easy to lose focus and let your business suffer because of it. You have to keep in mind why you want to run your own business. Whether it’s to have a luxury house, nice cars, or to simply spend more time with your family. Whatever it is, whether it changes over time, always remember that and let it be your motivation to stay focused. Watch Time Management for eCommerce with David Aggiss Part 2 of 2

Today on the show, I have one of the first contacts I made when starting this show, David Aggiss. I had him on, all the way back in November of 2015. Since then, he has given up the day job and is his own full-time boss. He has a few business, one of which being an Amazon business. We’re going to dive in and find out David’s strategy for selling on Amazon.com. Getting Started selling on Amazon.com David started learning about Amazon in April/May of 2015 and began receiving some training. In about four months, he started selling his own product. He took off quite well in Q4. At the time, incentivised reviews were still allowed so he made that a large part of his strategy. His sales exceeded his expectations going from 10 units a day to 30 on average. He launched his second product in Q4 last year and focused on his listing since incentivised reviews were no longer available. Finding a product There are a lot of techniques for finding products. David decided to simply look through Amazon. This is a great technique for finding good products. Look for lower prices and low competition items when first starting out. If you find a good product and the listing isn’t optimised, then there is definitely an opportunity for you to sweep in and take over. You can use Google Trends, Merchant Words to help you find what popular and what people are looking for. David didn’t use any tools to find products, like Jungle Scout etc. He didn’t know what his products would be so he wouldn’t know what to search. Once he picked the products, he verified through Jungle Scout that there was a demand. Now he has about 5 products he’s working through launching. He search Amazon to find his products. He narrowed his search to products between $15 and $50 and looked for products that interested him. If you are interested in the product then it’s easier to relate and figure out what those buyers are looking for. Then you can tailor your listing to those shoppers. Selling on Amazon.com Post-Incentivised Reviews Getting reviews has become much more difficult since Amazon banned incentivised reviews. With this new world, you have to pay more attention to reviews since you can no longer give products away in exchange for a review. One thing to pay attention to when getting started with a new product is the number a reviews your competition has. If they have thousands of reviews, it’s going to be much harder to compete because it is more difficult to reach a competitive level. Make sure you competitors only have a hundred or so reviews so you can better compete. Then you can use other services to help get legitimate reviews. You can also try to get traffic coming in from off Amazon.Ads on Facebook, Google, and Bing are great places to start. There are also ways you can use Amazon to boost your listing. Spending heavy on PPC at the beginning is a good way to drive traffic when selling on Amazon.com. Once your listing gets going, then you can cut back to where it’s profitable. One thing David mentioned was participating in Lightning Deals. These deals on put on by Amazon that offers their shoppers very good discounts for a very limited amount of time. There is a link underneath your Advertising tab on the main screen of Seller Central. It’s not all the time, but Amazon will offer you a Lightning Deal when it’s relevant. This is a great way to drive a lot of sellers to you listing and gives a nice boost to new products. Amazon sets the parameters. They will tell you the time slot, the minimum number of units, and the sale price which is based on your sales history. David, for example, recently got a time slot for 1am to 7am. Not the best time as many people aren’t looking at Amazon so early in the morning. Despite that, he had an additional 40 sales from the deal. Watch Selling on Amazon.com with David Aggiss Part 1 of 2

AMS - Amazon Marketing Services It’s offers more robust to you PPC advertising. The top banner ad on Amazon, that is usually a link to someone’s storefront, that’s Amazon Marketing Services. Sometimes there are ads under the Buy box, those are Amazon Marketing Services ads. It’s more exposure and drives more customers to your products which, in turn, could lead to more sales. Getting Started With Amazon Marketing Services It’s only accessible to vendors. This used to be invite only until Amazon started Vendor Express, which is open to everyone. Now you can get access to Amazon Marketing Services once you have a purchase order. So once Amazon orders product from you, then you have access to AMS and all the benefits that come with it. To learn how to get started with Vendor Express, please check out my interviews with Will Tjernlund. AMS Workaround If you don’t want to go down the route of Vendor Express, there is a work around. You can sell Amazon a product that you don’t intend to keep in stock. Go to aliexpress and buy 10 units of some item. Tell Amazon that you want to sell it to them and they will request samples. Once that process starts, you should be able to then sign up for AMS. Once in Amazon Marketing Services, you are able to advertise any products, not just the ones you have in Vendor Express. Not only can you advertise products that are in your Seller Central, you can advertise products for items that Amazon doesn’t list you as the seller of. This is very beneficial if you have a Merch by Amazon account. If you sell Merch, you don’t have access to ads. With Amazon Marketing Services, you can then run ads for you t-shirts. You can check out my interview with Chris Green if you are interested in getting started with Merch by Amazon. Issues with Vendor Express It may not be worth it, for everyone, to utilize Vendor Express beyond getting your foot in the door. There are many issues with it because they take over the listing and they tend not to optimise it so it converts. However, it’s almost a necessity for some. For example, Anthony has a friend that selling a health and beauty product that he makes from home. Since he makes it from home it is impossible for him to get ungated. However, by selling through Vendor Express he is now able to get past that since it’s technically Amazon selling it, not him. Vendor Express is making strides to improve the listings by making some of it available to the sellers to be edited. Some aspects, like the title, you may need to ask Amazon and jump through hoops for, but it is possible to optimise your listing. Get in touch with Anthony: He has written two books about selling on Amazon: Bootstrapping E-commerce: How to Import and Sell on Amazon Bootstrapping E-commerce: Advanced Amazon Tactics You can contact him at he publishing company [email protected] Zonblast offer an optimising service which is a great place to start. You can get more information by emailing [email protected]. Watch Amazon Marketing Services with Anthony Lee Part 3 of 3