Product
research is probably the most time-consuming task for me. You can of course
outsource this (just as you can outsource any or ALL parts of the process) using
sourcing agents. But as a newbie, I wanted to do it for myself, at least the
first time around, so that I knew exactly what was involved and then to be able
to give better instruction when I eventually did outsource this part. But to be
honest, I love this part so much that I just spend time on it for fun and even
now I continue to pick up this task for myself. It’s just so exciting
discovering new opportunities.
So
I found a product relatively easily. Firstly I picked a category that I was
interested in and simply began browsing on Amazon. This was before I’d learned
about research tools that make this part easy such as Jungle Scout where you can literally enter your criteria and it will show you all the
possible matches on Amazon. Boom!
Then,
I ran the product through my personal “battery of tests”. If a product passes each of
these tests, that says to me “yes, I am going to be a successful, profitable
product”… and I know this even before I start selling. That's the beauty see, I can pretty much guarantee a product's success without spending a dime.
Then
I contacted around 20 suppliers (around an hour to find a load of manufacturers
and check their credentials), then it was just a copy and paste job, the same message to all.
Back
and forth with emails, whittling down the 20 suppliers to just a handful and
negotiating HARD took probably around a couple of hours a night over the next
week. Bear in mind that this whole process can be sped up by staying up late
one night and Skyping or Whatsapping suppliers and getting answers to all
questions in one go.
FINDING A PRODUCT: 3 HOURS
RUNNING TESTS: 2 HOURS
CONTACTING SUPPLIERS: 2 HOURS
SHORTLISTING SUPPLIERS: COUPLE OF HOURS PER NIGHT OVER A WEEK: 10
HOURS
TOTAL FOR RESEARCH STAGE: 17 HOURS
I have my manufacturer arrange shipping so there's really little for me to do until it arrives at its destination. I use the time that my manufacturer is busy making my stuff to prepare the listing. Before
you begin listing your product on Amazon, you need to do some keyword research. If you don’t know what
you’re doing with this part, it could take forever and you’ll still get it
wrong. I now have a step-by-step process for my keyword research. I have it
written down and I go through it methodically. It saves a ton of time and I’m
confident with the results. What used to take me around a week, working every
evening, now takes me just one evening to do.
I actually outsource this part because
I have detailed instructions written down on what and how to do it, it’s easy
for a VA (virtual assistant) to follow. I just find this process so incredibly
boring. This part really is not for me.
Once
you have your keywords and you know what to include in your copy, you can get a
copywriter on board to write your listing, making sure to include the keyword
list that you’ve issued to them.
I
wrote the copy for my listing myself for my first product. Simply because I
wanted to save money everywhere that I could. But I would recommend getting a
copywriter to do this for you unless you have previous experience. Do it
yourself if you’re on a super tight budget, but it’s a bit “chicken and egg”.
You’ll likely make more money if the sales copy is professional, because you’ll
sell more. But if you haven’t the money in the first place, and you do it
yourself, you may not sell very well and thus make fewer sales and take much
longer until the profit starts rolling in. This is one place that I’d recommend
not scrimping. I’ve since had my first listing redone professionally and my
conversion rate definitely improved as a result. You can get good copywriters
on places like upwork.com at very reasonable prices.
I
also did all my own photography (seeing a pattern here?). I had a half decent
camera and have been told I have an “eye” for it. And I also like playing
around editing photos, so I kind of knew what I was doing with this. I even did
some lifestyle shots, scoped out suitable venues and used my good-looking friends as models
(luckily, it just so happens that they’re avatars for my target audience). Again, if you’re
really bootstrapping this business, taking your own photos is a good way to
start out. But I’d recommend at least watching a few Youtube tutorials on how
to take decent photos. I do know some sellers who shot their own using their
iPhones and they came out pretty well. They sent them off to someone on
fiverr.com to remove the background so that it appears a clean white, as in
Amazon’s image guidelines. And there you have it.
KEYWORD RESEARCH: 3 HOURS
COPY WRITING: 5 HOURS
PHOTOGRAPHY: 2 HOURS
EDITING: 2 HOURS
TOTAL HOURS CREATING LISTING: 12 HOURS
I
probably spent every evening for the first two weeks working on the launch. I’m
a believer in using sales velocity sites for an initial spike in the algorithm,
to get your product noticed by Amazon, although nowadays I have other techniques so I definitely rely on this a lot less.
I
also use influencer marketing, whereby I’d find someone on social media that
has a huge following in my niche and pay them to feature my product on their
Youtube or Instagram, etc. I also ran Facebook™ ads, directing some to my
listing and some to a landing page to collect email addresses which worked
really well. I can use those email addresses to contact those same people in
the future should I release another product in the same niche, maybe offering
them a coupon code to get a new product at a discount, which happens to now be
my main focus for all my future product launches.
Once I’d gotten to a decent position in Amazon’s search results using several different tactics, the rest kind of took care of itself. The higher my product climbed, the more I sold. The more I sold, the higher it climbed and so on, until I reached the top 3 on the first page of search results.
SALES VELOCITY SITES: 5 HOURS
CONTACTING INFLUENCERS: 5 HOURS
CREATING FACEBOOK ADS: 3 HOURS
OTHER: 5 HOURS
TOTAL TIME SPENT ON LAUNCH: 18 HOURS
TOTAL TIME SPENT ON GETTING YOUR PRODUCT LIVE AND RANKING: 47 HOURS
So once it's live and sales are consistently coming in, what is there to do?
I check on sales regularly throughout
the day to see how things are progressing, which is made easy by the Amazon
Seller’s app. If sales are slow, I then check my listing, to make sure that it’s
still live and there are no issues. I also check my listings every day to see
if I’ve had any new reviews. I check to see if I’ve received any seller
feedback. I check my emails regularly throughout the day (again, I do this from
my phone when I have a spare second during the day, like when I’m waiting to
pick the kids up or waiting for them to finish their swimming lessons or
something). I answer questions if someone has asked something about one of my
products on the listing. I answer emails from customers if they have any issues with a product
and happen to get in touch with me instead of Amazon’s customer services. But
to be honest these are few and far between.
I'm also not really a numbers or spreadsheet kind of person. I don’t need to run any accounts to
check on my expenditure and profits, etc. because I have a tool that integrates
with my Amazon account directly and basically breaks everything down for me into easy
spreadsheets that I can just download
and send to my accountant.
So I honestly spend around half an hour per day on my business. Probably less. And that's an average, sometimes I don't do any work at all.
Then there are tasks that are more of a weekly/monthly, rather than daily thing. Such as reordering stock from my supplier. Or analysing my ads, seeing which are performing well, maybe increasing the spend on those while culling those that are underperforming. Running split tests on my listing, maybe trying different images on my listing and monitoring my conversion rates to see if they work better than the previous ones. There are lots of things that I could play about with and continually improve. If you've got the time then great, I don't with having 2 under 5s. If you get really into it, it's actually quite fun and becomes a sort of hobby. One that pays! The best thing is that it's entirely up to me. If one day I don't feel like doing any work, I don't have to. I know that people are still buying my stuff and Amazon are still shipping it out to them. Insert Jazz Hands emoji here!!
TOTAL TIME SPENT ON DAILY TASKS: PROBABLY LESS THAN HALF AN HOUR.
And of course, just to reiterate, if you don't want to do any of this yourself, you don't have to. You can outsource every single task on the above list for mere dollars on websites like upwork.com or fiverr.com or you could get a VA of your own and train them how to do EVERYTHING, they basically run the business for you. I'd recommend looking at onlinejobs.ph and contracting to the Philippines as the rates are super reasonable and the work ethic from VAs on this site is second to none.
I don’t know about you, but I feel like 47 hours upfront work is completely worth
it to then have a recurring income stream that I have to work so little on. I
went on vacation in June for 14 days and apart from opening the app to see how
many I’d sold each day, I did literally NO work. What other business is there
where you get paid for doing nothing?
This
is why I recommend getting into this game to literally everyone I meet because
if you have a spare half hour per day, then why not use it to run a business
like this and make some money?
Do
you have a spare half hour?
By Kay Herdsman.
See è HERE ç for more information.
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