Do you ever struggle to find your own product listing on Amazon?

Or maybe you know you have a good product and you’re just tired of not making enough sales.

It could be that you need help with shifting that stock you've sent in for FBA.

If any of this sounds familiar, this is the episode for you.

Even if you haven’t yet started selling on Amazon, but you’re planning it, or even thinking about it, this episode will help.

Listen in to hear me share:

• The free resource I’ve created for you (00:21)
• Why you can’t find your own product listing on Amazon (2:43)
• How to write a great Amazon product listing (4:05)
• A free way to get great (Amazon-specific) keywords (7:34)
• Why you need professional images - and how to take them yourself (10:32)
• Getting your pricing right (11:51)
• My best advice about fulfilment - and FBA or not (13:32)
• How to get more traffic to your listing (17:53)
• Whether Amazon is the best marketplace for you (22:12)

USEFUL RESOURCES:

• FREE download 
• Jungle Scout
• Episode 34: How to take your own professional product photos
• Episode 30: Where’s the best place to sell products online?

LET’S CONNECT

Find me on Instagram

Work with me

Mentioned in this episode:

Proudly sponsored by Tonbridge Accountants

Welcome to Tonbridge Accountants, where creativity meets clarity in business finance. Wendy and Laughton are not just accountants; they're your partners in navigating the complexities of business finance. We simplify VAT, corporation tax, and crucial cash flow management, guiding you through decisions like company purchases or setting up a new business. Our approach is personal. We work closely with creative entrepreneurs, providing a virtual finance office that ensures you have the financial support and clarity your business needs to thrive. With us, it's more than accounting; it's about empowering your creative venture with strategic financial insights. Tonbridge Accountants is the partner you need to unlock financial clarity and freedom, allowing you to focus on what you do best: creating. We're the missing piece in your creative journey, ready to transform your business finance into a strength. WEBSITE: https://tonbridgeaccountants.co.uk/

Support this podcast for the price of a coffee

if you loved this episode please consider sending me a one-off tip. It helps me to keep bringing this podcast to you, for free. If you'd like to support this podcast, you can do so here: https://bring-your-product-idea.captivate.fm/support

INTRO (8s):

Welcome to the, bring your product ideas to life podcast, practical advice, and inspiration to help you create and sell your own physical products. Here's your host, Vicki Weinberg.

Vicki Weinberg (21s):

Do you ever struggle to find your own product listing on Amazon Or maybe, you know, you have a good product and you re just tired of not making enough sales. It could be that you've sent in to some stock for Amazon FBA, and you need a bit of help shifted it because it's just that in the warehouse, If any of this sounds familiar, this is definitely the episode for you. And even if you haven't yet started selling on Amazon, but perhaps your planning to do it, or even just thinking about in this episode will really help. So before I go any further, I'd like to tell you about to a free download I've created for you. It has the same title. It's this podcast episode, it's a completely free, and it has loads and loads of tips and things to try to get you off to a really good start on Amazon, or to help you improve.

Vicki Weinberg (1m 3s):

If perhaps you'd been on their for a while and things just aren't going as you taped, there were actually 38 tips. I have counted them. You could use it as a check-list to work for a year, or you could just pick and choose whatever is relevant for you. But I have a way I am a certain, they were going to be things on there that perhaps you haven't considered, or even if you have perhaps needed to know a little bit more about before you could go off and implement them. So I promise this will be some things on there that you can try and you should see it results from those. And I guess if this is the first time you've listened to this podcast, you might wonder what actually makes me or an authority on this in what and why, you know, you should. Okay. How about what I have to say? So just a bit of background. I've been selling on Amazon myself, a favor five years now, and I also work of lots of other seller's to either get to set up and get their listing set up and start selling or to improve upon what they're doing already.

Vicki Weinberg (1m 54s):

So I work on Amazon seller central and Amazon vendor central every single day. So those are the backend systems for sellers, and I'm really familiar with everything. I know what's important on Amazon. I can see how Amazon is changing. It's a very different marketplace. When, when I got to set up five years ago, I know what works. I know how to get started well I'm and today, or a risk really wants to share all of that with you. So this list have really simple tips on going to talk about a few of the things that I cover in the download, but don't worry, and it's still worth getting, because there's still plenty of things. There will really help you to make the sales that your product deserves se to get the free of resource goes to the show notes of this episode.

Vicki Weinberg (2m 37s):

Or you can go to Vicki, Weinberg dot com, click on free resources, and you'll find it right there. So you can't find your product listing on Amazon. Something new clients often tell me is they can't find their own products when they search what an Amazon, they might have listed it days ago, they might of listed it or weeks or even months ago, but yet when they type something into the search bar should bring it up. It just isn't there.

And there is a reason for this. So most of the time or whatever you search, what Amazon, you get pages and pages of search results. And I don't know about you, but I don't look any further for them page one. And to go on to page what I'm really isn't easy. Umm, the listing shown first and the ones who have been proven to make sales and therefore they also make Amazon some money, which means they've been selling for a while.

Vicki Weinberg (3m 21s):

They've built up a sales history and they've got some reviews as well. So Amazon basically knows that if somebody is looking for something related to the search term, they've typed into the search bar, they know that by showing these listings, these listings usually sell and they usually make Amazon some money. So therefore they're going to go at the top, which in turn makes it really hard for anyone used to get started. The other way to get to the top of page one or at least on page one is to pay, to be there using Amazon advertising personally. I think that's actually a really good idea. And I we'll talk about that a bit in a D in detail a bit later. So starting right at the beginning, you definitely have to have a following to be in with any chance of appearing on page one.

Vicki Weinberg (4m 5s):

And that's even before we start talking about advertising or promoting your listing in any way, you do need to have a really great product listing. So it needs to be optimized for search, which basically means including all of the keywords and phrases that a customer searching for and using all the fields that are available to you. You also want to have great images and a competitive price. And what was he now is briefly talk to each of these intern and to give you a little bit more idea of what's involved. So when I talk about having a way to optimize listing the absolute basics that you're need to write or a product title, five bullet points and some description text, I actually really, really like the format Avalara's in product listing and its my opinion.

Vicki Weinberg (4m 47s):

If you're a really good listing for Amazon, it will also work really well on or any other online marketplace. Actually I launched on Amazon and on Shopify at the same time and it was actually my Amazon listing that I used that I used to set up for my Shopify store or rather than the other way round, because I just really liked the format of Amazon's listings. And I felt that it did work really well on my own website as well. So if your sell look in to sell it in more than one place, you don't necessarily have to write more than one product description. You might find that the keywords change based on where you're selling your products, but generally a product listing with him for Amazon. If it's a well optimized listing, we work well on any other on my own marketplace.

Vicki Weinberg (5m 30s):

So as well as what you can actually see on the listing. So the title in the Berlitz, et cetera, there's also something called search terms, which don't display on your listing. But I have a chance to add in some more relevant keywords on the back end of the listing. If you like, you get 250 characters to use here. And a really

common mistake I see is this been left blank. So if this is new and you haven't used thes this field and go in and, and take a look at this because that's a really quick and easy thing you can do and a free thing you can do to just improve your listing overall, straight away. So that is a bit of a, an access where you will always use the global of a word where possible. And do you want to repeat any words just to make the most of those 240 characters?

Vicki Weinberg (6m 11s):

So for example, a rather than write a report or for babies, what are your wraps would offer nubile on the keyword you'd actually put in to the search term field who would be a swaddle, a baby rat newborn, and maybe we should put babies or wraps swaddles, a noose deplorables as well. This might actually work better than a visual and you can see this in a free guide to get a good idea. What I mean, if we just can't

visualize it, I know that I understand things so much better when I see them written down. So if you're the same, go and get the guide. So all of the fields that I've mentioned should be filled out and it's key to research to key words before you start writing. So you can include this in your text or in a way that feels really natural and really relevant.

Vicki Weinberg (6m 52s):

So again, I give some examples for this in a download that I mentioned, but I guess something you might want to know is, well actually, where do we even get these key words? But I'm talking about, so personally I use a paid software called jungle scout, which all linked to in the show notes. This is an Amazon specific tool that has lots of features. And at some point I will do a whole episode are in a jungle scout because I do think it's can be really useful tool for Amazon sellers. But depending on the amount of products you have or the amount of products you plan to launch, you may or may not want to use this. Cause I say it is paid for say for today, I'm gonna talk about the things that you can do for free. And as I say, I will do a separate episode or at least a blog post on jungle scout at another point.

Vicki Weinberg (7m 34s):

And you can decide to put something that's worth investing it, but for now let's talk about the things you can do without spending any money. So one thing you can look at for your Amazon keywords is Google AdWords. Why, what people type into Google and what they type into Amazon, isn't always an exact match. It's a good start. And it's certainly better than nothing or discussing another bonus here with, to be that if you were looking to set up your own website, as well as Amazon, obviously you would also be generating keywords and terms that would be good to use on your own website as well. So this would definitely be somewhere you could start, but, but if I was looking for a ride listing for Amazon specifically, that would be the only thing I ever do.

Vicki Weinberg (8m 14s):

My favorite three-way to get relevant Amazon search terms or to go into the Amazon homepage and type in something related to your products into the search bar. So for example, if I type in swaddle, it brings up a list

of options to finish that search term. And these are the things that people are actually searching for. So if I type sports or into the search bar, which I did just a few minutes ago, I see Amazon make suggestions like swaddle blanket for newborn SWAT or wrap. So I'll do a Muslim. And if you then type in all the relevant words, it's to your product and then use ones you found, you can expand even more say for example, by typing in Swatow, it came up with a suggestion for the rap.

Vicki Weinberg (8m 56s):

If I typed support or wrap up into the search bar, it's just SWAT or rap or not three months or so, what your looking for his to end up with a list of words and phrases that you can use in your product listing and perhaps if or when you start running Amazon ads too. So what you would do is you'd set aside some time sort of probably half an hour is enough and you'd go through this exercise and you would note down in a list, all of the words that you get. And another thing final thing that you could do is to look at a competitor to listings, please do so please don't copy of your competitors listings. But if you see that most of your competitors are using a certain word or a certain phrase and your titles, it might be worth you including that in yours, if it's relevant, as you can imagine, it's probably there for a reason.

Vicki Weinberg (9m 39s):

So what you would do is you would do all of this research, you would have yourself, a long list of, of keywords. And when I say keyword to a member, some of these will be long tail keywords or phrases. So for example, a squat or a wrap for newborn is a long-tail keyword. You would have this list and the you are try and use those in your text as much as possible when your right in that. And I've got lots more information in the download about how to write the text as well. So lots of, sort of thing's to include, and also some block pace on that, but I will link T in terms of generating in the search terms, I would suggest taking this list and putting him into some kind of a free online tool that takes out duplicates. And that will sort of end up with your final list of keywords you can do.

Vicki Weinberg (10m 20s):

So there are plenty of tools out there, just search for remove duplicate words, paste your list into one of those. And then you'll end up with a list that is hopefully under 250 characters that you can actually use. So the next thing I said, you needed to have a great images and that's because the eye on and Amazon search results page, you can only see two things. Really. You can see the product image and you can see the title. So your image has to entice people to click for you to your listing. The key thing tonight, who is that your main image? So the one that you can see on the search results page has to show the products alone. So you can't show anything. That's all that isn't sold off of it. And my includes people, and it has to be on a plain white backgrounds.

Vicki Weinberg (11m 1s):

This is the one shot that you absolutely have to have. Not only do you need really good policy, product images. So like a really nice shops of your product, where or less on a white background. I also suggest

having some photos of your product being used, which we call a lifestyle shots. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean you need to pay a professional photographer to take your photos. You can take your own at home. You can just use a basic camera or of a smartphone. There is actually a blog post and a podcast episode all about which I will link for you to in the show notes about how you can take those photos of yourself at home for none or very little cost, just using things you have around the house to set up your shots.

Vicki Weinberg (11m 42s):

So you get in, you don't have to spend a good deal of money here, but having really nice professional look in images will really help you. And then the final thing I mentioned in terms of getting a new listing set up correctly from the start is thinking about price. So to determine your selling price. And I really hope that if you've listened to anything, what I've done before, you've sort of landed on your price before you go to set up your listing, okay? Before you even went the source your product. In fact, that's the time I do recommend that you do it, but whenever you are settling on a price for Amazon, there's a few ways you can do it. So you could use it all like jungle scout, which was a tool I mentioned earlier.

Vicki Weinberg (12m 24s):

And you can look at products similar to yours and see what the average selling price is. Or you can easily do some free research yourself to find out what products similar to yours to selling for an MSN. So you could just type something in the search bar, look at the results and see what the prices are. That is not to say absolutely not to say that you should be price in your product in the same as everyone else. But if yours is more expensive, you need to be able to explain why it's more expensive in your description. And by that, I don't mean you literally call it out, but I mean, your listing needs to explain the benefits of your product so well that customers can justify paying a higher price for it equally. If you feel that your product doesn't have some of the features and benefits of other comparable products, maybe you're going to price slightly lower, or maybe you decide you're going to price slightly lower for the first month for three months, get initial sales.

Vicki Weinberg (13m 14s):

And then you're going to raise your prices at some point in a future. But the, like the main thing is you have some sort of strategy and you have a price that makes sense for your product in the niche that you're looking to listing. Yeah. Based on the competition, your pricing has to make sense. And so now you have all of these whole basics in place. There's one more thing that I would add, which does tie into price actually, and that is shipping. So you might decide to use FBA or fulfilled by Amazon, which just as a reminder, is when you send your products into Amazon and they fulfill them for you. And if you do this shipping for Amazon prime customers, all right. So now I used to always recommend people use FBA, but I've got to change my mind in a bit that a bit recently.

Vicki Weinberg (13m 59s):

And I now don't believe that it is right for everyone, because if you already have your own distribution in place, so whether that's your sending out orders and that's something you've been doing in your happy to

continue doing, or maybe you have something maybe, you know, you have a bigger product range and your using something like a warehouse or distribution center, you might want to carry on doing that at least initially, because it may well be actually be cheaper for you. And as a customer, if you shop on Amazon, which I think most of us do, you might have seen recently that prime isn't always next day anymore. So as long as your shipping is reasonably fast and it's free, I think that's good enough. And yes, I did say free, if you're fulfilling your own orders on Amazon, I suggest always offering free standard shipping, even if it means building that into your product price.

Vicki Weinberg (14m 47s):

So perhaps you D you know, your charge, a couple of pounds extra in Amazon to account for the shipping, but to the customer, at least it appears for free, and you can always charge for faster shipping if that's something you're able to offer. Yeah. And I say this for two reasons. One is that customers like it. So while researching for this episode, I read that free shipping is the second most popular influencer of online purchasing decisions. Now, the actual stats for this really vary depending on where you work, but a big percentage of customers questions. So it does make them more likely to buy. And that was across all of the survey. So I like that. And with the grief of Amazon prime, there is an increased expectation from customers that shipping should be free or for them.

Vicki Weinberg (15m 31s):

So it's a sort of a thing that customers are starting to expect. And if you want to compete with other offers on Amazon, I think free shipping is definitely the way to go. And secondly, if you do ever decide to set up with Amazon FBA, I always recommend having another off of that. You feel yourself running at the same time anyway. And I recommend this for a few reasons. One is that I don't ever suggest sending in hundreds of units to FBA right at the outset, if you can avoid it. I did that at the beginning when I was first getting started. And I don't want to know how to say I regret it, but I do think looking back doing what I do now, which is sending in sorts of units in the tens as a woman, I need to replenish a cert in SKU a while that M may take a litter, perhaps a little bit more time to manage.

Vicki Weinberg (16m 23s):

I actually do think has benefits because nothing is sitting in Amazon's warehouse long enough to incur long-term storage fees. I've got a stop to hand to fulfill orders on other marketplaces. I think it's a good eye. I do think it's a good idea. And also something to bear in mind that is that if you are doing this in your sending in a few units, whether that's tens or twenties or a a hundred to Amazon as Amazon, depending on how quickly your product sell. At some point, Amazon going to start getting low on stock and replenishing can take a while, depending on the time of year. I mean, first of all, you have to physically sort of arrange to of your stock sent in to Amazon. Then someone has to collect it from you, or we have to drop it somewhere.

Vicki Weinberg (17m 4s):

It has to get driven. There has to get booked in all of this can take, you know, it can take days in a normal

time of you ever saw it in times of year, a particularly in quarter four, but it's getting busy. So that process can actually take a couple of weeks. You can, sometimes you get a notification that your stock has arrived in the Amazon warehouse, but then actually is not available with customers to buy for an off a week after that, because they just haven't had time to unpack the boxes, scan them and put them on the shelves and all that time you're missing out on sales, which is why I always suggest that if you do use FBA, you have an offer offer that you can fulfill. So you keep them stocked back for yourself because then you're never going to be missing out on those sales. And as it's, you know, as it's essentially the same offer is what Amazon or doing.

Vicki Weinberg (17m 46s):

So no price for shipping. And it comes in a couple of days. I think that's actually a really good option. Okay. So now I think we've covered a house. Get your listing all set up initially to the, you know, the best you can. Let's talk about some of the things you can do to get sales started. So first off is appetite. . I also think it's a way of saying if you've been setting and I was in for wild, but your not getting the sales you want, or it might be worth revisiting some of the things I've just covered and also some of the things, but I'm about

to talk about now as well. So first of all, I want to start with advertising. So if you're just starting out on Amazon or we, even if you've been selling for a while and perhaps, so it was, aren't what you want them to B I always recommend writing some sponsored products ad's to get started.

Vicki Weinberg (18m 36s):

So in fact, with the launch Amazon launch package that I offer or include a month of Amazon ad management here, because I do feel that what it's sad to say, it is really hard to get initial traction without it. I always tell my clients, but it shouldn't be seen as a long-term thing unless you want it to be because one is your product start selling well, and you have some reviews and you've got some sales history. You start ranking for relevant keywords, which basically means when someone types in a word relevant to your product, they then click on it and then they go on to buy it. And that tells Amazon that your product must be relevant to that Myrtle face phrase. And you start to show up for it in organic searches. So that is what ranking for keywords means. What you're doing, all of that.

Vicki Weinberg (19m 16s):

You might not need ads, or you might not need the same amount of ad spend, but I do think it's a really good way to get started. I also suggest when you start off, as well as running ads inside Amazon, you do whatever you can do to drive traffic from outside of Amazon to help you get started. So you could do XN or advertising to a listings. You could do a Facebook ads go into what Amazon this in, if you wanted to, but there's also

plenty you can do for free. So social media, you can do this email marketing, or you can just email to the link to your products, your friends, to your family and paste on your personal social media page. But really in the first set of weeks have having a product live with Amazon. You need to be telling people about it and doing everything.

Vicki Weinberg (19m 58s):

You can tell people about it multiple times, because getting started, I promise is the hardest bit. Aren't you start getting traction, you start getting sales. It does get a lot easier. The other thing I suggest doing is looking at some of the available features on Amazon, in some, some maybe relevant to you in sum may not be, but we'll just talk about to things it's worth considering what is setting up as a professional sell in account rather than an individual's selling account. And the differences is that a professional power costs twenty-five pounds plus the ATM. So that works out as 40 pounds, but I do think it's worth it. So one of the key differences is you will actually be able to run the advertising that I just mentioned, because you can't actually do advertising about this kind of account.

Vicki Weinberg (20m 43s):

It also means you can sell in higher volumes. And it also means if you want it to could apply for something called Amazon brand registry, which is the last thing I wanted to touch on. So if you're a brand has a trademark wherever it's registered all pending in the country and which you wish just to enroll in, or you can apply. So a brand registry is completely free and it gives you access to lots of other features on Amazon. So some of these include the ability to set up what's called A-plus content, which is basically product descriptions that have more images. Maybe they have graphs and tables and basic lots more features in a standard couple of paragraphs of text. You've probably seen lots of these listings on Amazon before, or perhaps haven't realized what they are, but this is basically a feature that's only available to Amazon brand registered sellers.

Vicki Weinberg (21m 32s):

You can also set up in Amazon storefront M you get more advertising options, and you also get better protection for your brand on Amazon. You can stop other sellers of hijacking your listing changing and changing the text, or, and also from people selling counterfeit items as well by FBA. So it's definitely something that's worth looking at. There were also loads, other things you can do in Amazon's that you can set up deals and discounts. There were also some sort of a legitimate ways to get early reviews. These are programs that are run via Amazon, that a definitely worth looking into it. And I have, and I've included information on all of these in the download that I mentioned.

Vicki Weinberg (22m 12s):

And I guess the final thing to talk about is Whether Amazon is the best marketplace for you in the first place before you even get started with any of this. I think it's definitely something worth looking at because hopefully what I've shared today has helped you see that there is a bit of work that goes into getting it right at the start and Amazon, and you don't necessarily want to spend the time that effort and potentially the money. If there is a actually a more appropriate marketplace for your product. I did an episode about the different marketplaces a while ago, and I will link to that in the show notes. You can find that in the guide that I've produced for this episode, I've also included some tips and things you can try to work out with Amazon would be a good market place for you.

Vicki Weinberg (22m 52s):

So it's all included. Again, you can get that from VickiWeinberg.Com or in the show notes for this episode. I really hope you found this episode useful. My beliefs still is that Amazon is a great market place, but it is a hard place to get started on M. And if you do decide to sell that, I genuinely want you to do well. And I hope that this, everything that I've shared today helps you do that. Or if you have any feedback on this episode, or I'd love to hear from you, you can email me Vicki@VickiWeinberg,com or come and find me on Instagram. Thank you so much for listening and have a lovely rest of your day. And I'll be back with another fantastic interview next week.