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Amazon – Shishev vs Bezzy Boi (40)

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Ladies & gentlemen,

In the eerie peace and quiet before the TikTok degen volcano erupts on STM, ole Shishev has something different in store to keep yer eyeballs entertained in the interim.



Here's why I'm starting an Amazon follow along:

1. I've chosen to tackle The Bezos because I'd like a slice of that Amazon pie. "Amazon’s worth is currently $1.7 trillion."

2. For your entertainment (and, hopefully, my own mini-profits)

3. Amazon seems relatively chill in comparison to, say, Zuckerbook. On the surface PPC looks quite tame. I'd rather go opposite of where everyone's going.

4. If this works, I'll turn it into a tutorial where newbies would be able to launch their own stuff on Bezzy-land for not too much cash-money.

5. In order to improve my cursing game, inspired by @jaybot

Disclaimer: I have 0 Amazon experience. Nada. I know ecommerce but I don't know ecommerce on Amazon. Literally started from scratch.



Guess what? I can sell whatever the fuck I want too, BEZZY BOI.

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Checklist

- Found a half-decent niche with low competition where the product doesn't get used much if it all once it's setup, and it's priced at $55+, and it has no HAZMAT shit. Think decorative but also slightly useful in a way.

- Differentiated my product by strengthening certain aspects of it based on bad reviews from my competitors' listings and including an extra size making it a 4-piece set. This is around a $5,000 to $20,000/month revenue product.

- Successfully sourced said product after doing a bit of research and ordering a bunch of samples and got it shipped to Bezos' FBA warehouses in The 'Murica. God bless sourcing agents, seriously. Get yourself a sourcing agent and save yourself massive headaches, time and money. More on that later on as I post updates.





- I have outsourced literally every single thing so far because I have no free time -- from product sourcing, to freight forwarding, to my listing's content to my product's photography, to keyword research (with tools like Jungle Scout, Helium10). All things you can do yourself, for the most part, if you're a newbie. More on this later.

- Listing has been setup and is live (Amazon + User Experience = No Bueno, what a fucking nightmare -- more later)

Go watch Paul J. Savage on Youtube if yer interested in learning more Amazon thingamagics - it's genuinely valuable content, unlike all the dropshipping toddlers left and right.

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Plans

I've launched whatever combination of campaigns I could muster up based on shit I've been reading around and watching Youtube videos, including tricks from Zack and other people.



Plus every single imaginable promo/deal/flash sale whateverthefuck you can think of.

General consensus, from what I can see, is to let these bad boys run for at least 4-7 days before even checking any stats, let alone touching any camps.

Well guess what, I checked ze stats today and 0 sales so far. but spend is low, and slow.

Stats

Ad spend: A few bucks
Sales: 0
My Patience: Non-existant

Goals

1. Get 1 fucking sale in the next week or two
2. Get more than 1 fucking sale, in the next week or two
3. Maybe launch a Messenger giveaway these next few days where everybody wins a coupon to try and get some Add to carts and do some Search > Find > Buy wizardies. Got the right lander for the job too.

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Will Shishev fail miserably or will he snag dollarydoos right under Bezos' nose?

Time will tell.

If anything, I'll figure out a way to sell out my inventory without losing too much money. Or I'll publicly bribe Zack and other Amazon pros to help me out.

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P.S. I'm no Follow-Along messiah, nor am I a chosen one, nor am I legendary, nor am I organised nor patient as many of our members. Because I have no time I like to jump the fuck in there, break shit, deadlines set to YESTERDAY and in the aftermath and lost budgets I hope to find nuggets – scalable nuggets. We'll see what happens after a few hundred to a few K in ad spend.

Next update...in a week or two, or three

Stay tuned

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I'm so hyped man, can't wait to see where this goes.

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Finally man, finally.

Been waiting so long for it.

Will definitely follow up with be thread.

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Looking forward to your progress here! Feel free to pm me any questions in regards to some of the tools you are using i.e. Helium 10/Keepa/etc...

I've been doing the online arbitrage model on Amazon for 3+ years now, so I think I know a thing or two about Amazon . I haven't dived into private label which looks like what you're doing here.

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Absolutely love it man! Very psyched!



PS If that Bezos before/after split isn't an advertisement for TRT I don't know what is! lol

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Very nice! We don't have too many good threads on how to sell on Amazon. Looking forward to seeing how you do!



Amy

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I read the title and legit thought you were going in a head-to-head case study competition with @bbrock32 hahaaha

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Thanks mate! Will most definitely be asking for help here. Haven't done the branded thing officially (it does have a brand name on the boxes though) as I'm not too scared of anyone stealing this at least at this point while learning. I've lowered the prices where there's barely any margin just in the hopes of getting that initial sale.


Dude is mega-jacked. Just looking at how many fees there are on the Amazon platform -- referral fees, FBA fee, monthly pro account subscription, you giving more money to Bezos to buy clicks, packing/sorting fees -- no wonder he's worth that much.

Heheh I wouldn't be overly keen on competing vs bbrock but pretty sure he'd have taken on the challenge if he were available.

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Well, well, well....

Well, well, well, well, well....

What have we here:



I'll continue to not check my stats until these 4-7 days pass.


Goals passed:

1. Get 1 fucking sale in the next week or two Check
2. Get more than 1 fucking sale, in the next week or two Check

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Now please tell us, how does it feel to have the first sales?

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Taking dollarydoos out of Jeff's pocket? Pretty fucking good.

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Wow nice, just returned from my first vacation week since the covid madness started and I see @shishev has started his amazon journey at last! Very nice my man, I'm soooo much looking forward to how this goes for you, super excited

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Ever since Covid happened all of our shipments from China have had extreme delays. It's either you pay a lot less for land freight and wait forever plus slow customs clearance, or you pay outrageous fees for air freight. Hence launch delays and product stock hiccups. Annoying.

May have to place an order in the next week or two if it shows promise as there aren't many of these bad boys in stock.

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I am just getting started with Amazon and find it's way cheaper and efficient from within the USA for my niche. Everybody on earth screamed China, China, China, and that it's way more cost-effective even after all the duties. But my personal experience has been way different. I am doing my listing(s) and campaigns in the upcoming week. Hope everything goes as planned. Following this thread and hope to learn a lot from experienced FBAs like you. Cheers.P.S. I've just posted a question. It would be helpful if you can answer it. Thanks in advance.

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I guess this is the question right?

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...etting-started

I thought posting the link would save some time for whoever would like to reply

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Yeah, it's cost-effective if you wanna wait for-ever. There are so many other downsides too. I'd have ordered my product directly from the US if I could for sure. Why not start a follow-along too? We'll all learn from one another as we go.

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Can't wait to see how it goes. Best of luck to you @shishev

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I am starting a follow- along later today. I must admit I cannot take the risk like you and can tell you have nerves of steel. In the same situation I'd lose my mind, LOL I am going the FBM route and not even ready to risk the $40 (approx) monthly fees, which explains my last question! But I realize now, I really need to stake the $40 because my decision is slowly tilting towards going for the monthly plan right away instead of the free plan. My supplier(s) are giving me enough margin at least 66 percent or even way more (if I decide to) and I am only sourcing/fulfilling if someone buys first! And I will send free pinterest traffic or traffic from my email list for the intial sales. Only to highly engaged customers... and get the first few reviews. I have a cool hack of getting super cheap Google PPC clicks, so may go that route, paid pinterest ads - only to boost Pinterest posts that have a lot of traction and bit of retargeting/LLA so the risk there is again super low. Yes, let's talk more on this @ my follow along later today. Cheers.
@matuloo thanks for posting the link. I will try to be careful next time.

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P.S. @shishev FBM to start with and then upgrade to FBA only those products that are doing well and then split the inventory between Amazon and my own store, so I am again at zero risk. And also sell the products both on my store and Amazon. And fulfillment by third party and Amazon.

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^ Your one and only goal right now should be whether your product(s) will sell or not -- everything else is irrelevant and is something you can and should figure out as you go.

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Super awesome! Congrats!! I missed this...

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Oh wow congrats @shishev! Gotta ask - what's the profit per sale?


My dear friend - your low-cost method can be so helpful to so many. Successful marketing isn't JUST all about spending 5-6 figures a day!

Looking forward to to that follow-along!



Amy

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Expected margin's going to be between 20-30%, depending on which of my price tags stick, typical ecom. Not focused on profit at the time being as the listing needs to get ranked and to a point where PPC spend is going to be small portion of total costs.

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Here's the follow-along.

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...966#post421966

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UPDATE:



I shall be spending as little time on this as possible and I shall outsource whatever fucking thing I can. Helium10 has that fancy-ass bidding robot and I'm thinking it may be worth the $200 or so a month. We shall see. Plus VA and maybe even a full-time employee later down the line.

That said, last week I resisted checking stats and literally left my camps alone so they can drain my CC in peace.

Stats look mega promising, despite losses, explanation below.





STATS:

- $801 Revenue
- 20 Sales
- $761 Ad spend > $573 sales from ad spend
- Getting organic sales and have ranked a buncha keywords position 1-10
- Nearly ALL keywords that have converted have done so at a profit with really low ACOS:









- Plus my product converts even at higher price tags -- have seized all dem crazy discounts.
- Some camp budgets have been boosted slightly, need to setup catchall/WL campaigns next week.
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- Basically dumped all my campaigns to gather data with minimal optimisation as promised. Played around with budgets and culled just a few keywords in the red a few days ago.

- Amazon's sale attribution has massive delays -- 48 hours min. Need to take it easy and check stats e.g. weekly.

- PPC seems extremely basic and entirely logic based when compared to Big G and Bing. There's 0 creativity involved and only so many things you can do / combine. So typical whitelists, blacklists, bid plays, phrase/broad/exact and such. At least until we get a brand up which unlocks vids and other shit.

I welcome Jeff's money into my pockets, blessed be His fulfilment centres.

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Main thread backstories to be released as I go:

Sourcing agent.

Took an extensive hiring process to find a great sourcing agent, I ain't gonna lie. Many, many hours spent writing a job post and trying to find the one agent that clicks -- there were 2 great potential agents and I just pulled the trigger on one. She's golden. Sourcing, extremely heavy discounts, negotiations, travels to factories around Shenzhen to inspect in place and meet with managers. My product has been sourced from factories that do not have an online presence and at a great price. All really cheap. She has sourced many other products for us, including stuff that's extremely difficult to get a hold of.

Most of all a massive amount of my time has been saved.

Newbies -- I recommend you learn how to source products and negotiate first before hiring a sourcing agent. Plus learning how to hire and manage employees.

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That's awesome And helpful! I am planning to hire after the financial year ends in April 2022. It may be cheaper for me to send someone to China from India than hiring someone there, while I keep the Indian manager busy with similar tasks within the country rest of the time. Let's see...
VAs from Philippines are the best, but it's more cost effective (effective in general!) for me to hire locally. Those hiring Indian VAs from the west have their legitimate concerns. But if I as an individual get my work done working with local staff... why not?!

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Micro-update:



First $XXX/day and even made a few dollarydoos profit (product has a half-decent discount still). Seems it's organic traffic too

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Loving the follow-along man this is great stuff!

Really hardcore hiring your own sourcing agent too - that's very impressive!

I have like zero knowledge of the Amazon FBA/White Label/Black Label/etc world... so is really interesting learning about all this...

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YES PLEASE !!! Nuff said :

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What a Christmas present @shishev! Most points in your post can EACH be developed into its own detailed post with all the "juicy details" - if you'd be willing and can find the time.

This is easily one of the best posts of this year! Bookmarked for re-reading in the near future.


Amy


Sent from my iPhone using STM Forums

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Agreed, please share the details!

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Fucking A.

My eyeballs weren’t ready for this. My other balls weren’t either.

Shocked and amazed at your progress on swearing.

Your Amazon progress is good too.

Always a real fucking treat to watch someone at your level dive in, break shit, and come out on top. Then ready for another round to conquer even more.

Lemme know when I should short Bezos stock and start buying into the $SHSHV IPO.

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Awesome @shishev, looking forward to your juicy details!

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@shishev Had a quick read now. Will need to read through several times and learn. Thanks for sharing.

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Couldn't resist getting another batch:



These babies are on the way to Bezos-land.

Despite the tiny margins people like the product, plus it's free money.

There have been 2-3 items left, I would guess slightly defective--but as soon as they get returned, somebody else would order ASAP.

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Listing's probably been deranked by now, let's see if I can get it ranked back up again.

And then order another batch before this one sells out, and it deranks...again.

As for the 'juicy details', maybe soon. Whenever I'm free.

Bye

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Awesome!

How have you been managing all the supply chain, inventory and shipping cost issues that have arisen in the past 12 months? I know this has been a massive headaches for so many ecom players, both in the DTC and the Amazon FBA space.

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WAIT))))))


You promised March or April! (No I didn't see the "or later" at all - selective blindness sorry!)

Looking forward to the details! Some time this month?



Amy

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Great follow along Shishev! Will keep an eye on this one.

We've been running on amazon for a few years now (fba & fbm) with our own products (that we manufacture ourselves in the UK).

We are currently in the researching/sourcing stage of creating some new brands to launch with china manufactured products. Gotta love FBA!

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These issues arose the moment corona struck and have only kept escalating since.

When supply and demand swing that much, and when it's such a mixed bag of risk and uncertainty, the best approach would be to follow what all the businessy and economics books say. A 101 strategy with clear actionable steps: Cut losses, stop poorly performing products, renegotiate /w factories, multiply the inventory index, have extra in stock, prepare for massive delays et cetera.

You would want to tighten up ALL the links in your entire chain (not talking about supply chain explicitly), not just one single chain. Such as attempting to fix only shipping costs, as an example. That won't work.

Personally, I don't like to overcomplicate things unnecessarily. Yes it's been bad, but it hasn't been the end of the world. The current product's factory told me, in a nutshell: "This is the LAST time you're getting away with these price tags mark our words!!1". LOL

There are certain product types that you can turn into brands that have what I call 'fun markups' as I am sure you know. They're so stupid it just gets hilarious–affiliate ROIs seem tiny by comparison. I'd look into pivoting to that if I had a large operation of sorts.

Deal!

Nice mate! How's the nightmare been with shipping and logistics if you've been handling that yourselves (at least in part)?

Long live FBA, I don't mind paying the outragious fees as long as I don't have to ever bother with shipping and customer support. And it's quite nice getting these "Amazon has shipped your sold item(s)" emails. They're like a nice plush cushion.

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Great follow along! I'm following along!!! I sell on amazon too but never dabbled with PL, maybe you can share some of those tools with a fellow peasant lol

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