Brian R Johnson of Canopy Management teaches us about all the different ways to make money on Amazon: book publishing, print-on-demand t-shirts, merchandise, private label, white label, dropshipping, and more. He also talks about how to create good Amazon ads, how to get rankings, and reviews.

welcome to the frugal preneur podcast.

I'm your host, Sarah St.

John and my guest today is the founder of canopy management, which is a full

service Amazon management agency.

He is the leading strategists and Amazon pay-per-click advertising.

Welcome Brian, our John.

Hi there.

Thanks for having me.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background and story

and history, how you got into Amazon's.

my Amazon journey started about six years ago.

I actually have about 14 years in e-commerce experience, both

selling products and doing pretty much every kind of online business

I could think of growing up.

So it was always a draw.

I always knew I was an entrepreneur, but I always I spent about 20

years in corporate 500 world.

And when I finally turned my back on it, I was very happy.

The stress levels went way down.

But I also work twice as much in order to, continue to.

14 years in e-commerce last six years on Amazon channels specifically.

And about the last five focusing specifically on Amazon advertising.

So that's something I, hyper specialized in.

Normally I was a generalist when it came to my, businesses and, education, but this

time I actually specialized in one thing.

Because it was a blue ocean opportunity.

Nobody else was teaching anything Amazon's training was horrible and that nobody had

courses or software, or could even tell you what was the right thing to do or not.

And so out of my own desperation, I created my own community and here's what

that ends up doing when you start creating your own community and saying like, oh,

I can tell you, cause I already know.

All of a sudden you get more and more people who come to you and

say, okay, you've got the answer.

It's like, oh, dang, I've got to get the answer.

I don't, have the answer.

I've got to go get it.

And after a while doing that enough years, you get your 10,000 hours

in, you become an expert at it.

it's kind of a trial by fire because somebody is always watching

somebody always testing you.

Somebody's always challenging you by far, if you can handle it,

that is a very, that's a merchant.

That's a fast way of growing into your space and becoming an authority.

If that's what you want.

So then what is canopy management do specifically like I

guess you help manage Amazon sellers

Yeah, so their brands sell on Amazon.

So Amazon sells products on Amazon.

But then also you've got.

sellers who can sell their own product lines.

They can develop their own product lines.

They can sell on Amazon and Amazon offers different types of on Amazon

and off Amazon advertising options in order to better promote a product.

This is very common among those who start a brand for the first time and

sell a brand new product that they manufacture and they source, and they

shipped to an Amazon warehouse near you.

And they try to sell it, but then they put their product in among

millions of other products on Amazon.

How do you stand out?

How do you get noticed advertising is one way of doing that.

So the agency, basically take over all the advertising and marketing for

a brand selling on the Amazon sales channel and we help them get visible.

We help them convert better.

We help them scale their sales.

Both through advertising and organic ranking, you know, some of the

different ways of basically getting your product shown better on Amazon.

And that continues to move up the chain until the point where they're ready

for some of the off Amazon advertising.

And so what are the different ways people can.

Make money on Amazon.

I mean, I know that you can self-publish books, which I've done through Amazon.

You can drop ship, I guess, through Amazon, you could white

or private label through Amazon.

there are different ones.

So there are and I I'll try to avoid some of the.

Industry terminology, but you've got things like wholesale, you have like a

main major manufacturer, like a Adidas or something like that, that they

manufacture, they sell brick and mortar retail, all day long they've got their

own direct consumer online stores.

And then they also sell directly to Amazon and Amazon interns takes that inventory

and then sells it on the Amazon site.

So that would be more of the wholesale side of things or the what they call

like one P or manufacturer basically working directly with Amazon wholesale

actually, technically is more of somebody sources, a product that somebody else

manufacturers and they grabbed, they get ahold of a batch of that product,

thousand units or something like that.

And then they either send it to an Amazon warehouse or they ship it themselves from

their own warehouse, which is an option.

So that would be more of the wholesale thing, but it was not their own product.

What you were saying.

As far as like private label, private label is typically a brand where somebody

creates their own product manufactured.

And then they source that product, from whatever country, you know, United

States, ideally, but from whatever country they're getting it from.

And then they can, again, they can either ship it to an Amazon warehouse, let

Amazon worry about logistics or they can ship it themselves from their own way.

You mentioned a couple of other ones, things like KDP, which

is a Kindle book publishing.

You've got things like a merch by Amazon, which is creating t-shirts

and those kinds of things where you Basically create your own designs.

There's also things like customs.

So there's a lot of different models.

Plus there's affiliate.

if you simply just have a content site, for instance, all you

do is you've got an audience.

You're an influencer.

Maybe you don't want to sell a product, but you certainly want,

if you refer somebody and say, Hey, here's a great product over

on Amazon, you get a commission.

That's the affiliate model.

And probably a lot of online entrepreneurs have started with

some kind of affiliate model in.

Career at some

point.

Yeah, I do that as well.

Like if I have someone on the show who has a book, for example, and I'll put

their book in the show notes, but it'll be with my Amazon affiliate links.

So yeah.

And anyone who's getting started in affiliate marketing, I think

that's a good way to start.

Although, I mean, the payouts aren't very much,

but you're not getting rich off of affiliate now.

And I actually, I was listening to a podcast.

I think it was the other day.

Where they were saying that they're kind of afraid that

Amazon's going to do away with the affiliate program in the next year.

I don't know.

Cause they keep dropping the

commissions.

Well, the key, yeah.

They keep dropping the commission for some models.

That make sense.

I mean, it's kind of like the same thing, YouTube, move to, they said,

it's like, look, you've got to be just a massive influencer with this

huge audience that you've built out in order to, make it lucrative.

Really.

You're not making your money off of the affiliate commission.

You're making an offer some other business model.

So if you're an entrepreneur and you're exclusively just relying on affiliate

commissions, the writing's on the wall, you actually need to come up

with other streams of income in there.

I know in the Amazon space, for instance, Three companies I had created, a full

training, professional training course.

I created SAS product, a software for automating, the advertising on Amazon.

And of course the advertising agency, those back in the day when I first,

growing up as an entrepreneur, I had never even considered it's like, run

three big companies at the same time.

It's feasible is not easy, but it's feasible, especially when

they blend together and they overlap and they cross promote.

It's a lot easier for those to join together.

Then having three completely disparate, companies for instance.

Yeah.

And I've been kind of curious about that merch by Amazon.

So like you could have a design made in Fiverr or whatever, and then put it

up on Amazon and do they, they actually print it and ship it and all of that.

And yeah.

So a print on demand is basically when, when somebody orders it.

You know, and so it's basically, they, it's just, it's a, one-off,

it's almost like a custom order.

And so what you get is you get millions of different t-shirt designs out there

somebody goes and buys your design.

So really you have to be really good about social engineering and really

understanding what's in demand.

And what people want that amazingly enough is that there's a lot of designs.

Are frankly very controversial that still are allowed to sell on Amazon.

And so it is interesting to see the, plethora of designs that are out

there, but really you have to be in the business of constantly testing

new designs, not a case where you're just going to go out to fiber and

say like, Hey, create me a design.

I've got an idea for a few things.

that's great.

But ultimately, if you're going to make a business out of it, then you

should be creating the 30 days in a month, you know, you better be

coming out with 30 new designs every single month and constantly testing.

That's the kind of pace you have to do in order to really make it, get to

the 5, 6, 7 figures a year in revenue, which was fully, possible on, Amazon.

We work a lot of the clients that canopy management works with are

they're doing six to seven figures.

just in product sales.

So it is a massive channel with a huge number of consumers on that,

which is something that most Shopify site owners they won't achieve.

But Shopify has got a lot more control of things like your audience and

the way you communicate to them and all the customizations you can do.

So you've got a lot more control, but you have to create.

Traffic in order to get there.

Yeah.

I think that's the advantage of Amazon when someone wants to start some kind of

e-commerce business and they're thinking about starting their own little shop.

I mean, like you said, you do have more customization and all the stuff,

but the traffic is kind of an issue.

what do you find to be the most profitable?

Amazon business models or types of products that you sell.

Easily private label, there's plenty of people who start

out just because they don't want the, work of having to, or they lack the

experience and the knowledge in order to.

Source their own products and have things manufactured and

invest a huge amount of money.

And so there's quite a few who start out on a small scale in like retail

arbitrage or online arbitrage.

And that's simply where you're going out and you're finding some, pack

of a product or something like that that can that you can basically buy

from a local retail store, 10 units, a hundred units, something like that.

And then you can basically resell it And so that's kind of an inexpensive,

low risk way of getting your feet wet in selling product on Amazon,

but probably the most lucrative where you going to have the higher

margins and more consistent results.

Your every year is definitely gonna be private label where you create your own

product habit, manufactured with your brand name and you sell it and you create

the message to your target audience.

Okay.

That makes sense.

And then as far as SEO, If you're on Amazon, some of that probably has

kind of taken care of for you in a way, but I guess you have to at a

cost.

Yeah.

Amazon will take.

generally we look at it as thirds.

So it's usually a third of our of the selling price Goes into sourcing

a product as in having the product, manufactured it and having it shipped

to wherever you need to distribute it from a warehouse, Amazon warehouse or

your own warehouse or your own living room, if that's what you choose to do.

more of which is more of the eBay model as far as from your own

living room, which I've done that.

so that's the first, third, another third usually goes into Amazon fees, especially

if you're doing like say FBA, which is fulfillment by Amazon's own warehouses.

that's usually the better way to go because Amazon has

created this whole prime member.

Instant gratification with two, three shipping.

It's really easy.

It's highly trusted.

The conversion rates are higher on Amazon.

The shipping is instantaneous.

I can get it very quickly.

And so it's got a high appeal for consumers, but Amazon is

going to basically say like, yeah, all my fees together.

you've taken another third.

And then what you're walking away as a consumer is that last.

as a seller, that's what you're walking away with is that last third.

So, if you are targeting like say 20 to 30% margin that's pretty normal, but.

The big key with the Amazon and sales channel compared to a Shopify or some

other e-commerce platform, which I've also sold plenty on is the difference

is usually like on a direct consumer site, like a brand is, oh, a branded

site would probably be, if you're on like a Nike store site, for instance,

that's obviously gonna have a.

Conversion rate.

Right?

But on a generic brand, that's not very well known.

That's selling their own product from a Shopify site.

If you hit a 5% conversion rate, you're doing well on Amazon.

If you had a 5% conversion rate you're doing really bad, you should

be up in the 15, 20% conversion rate on Amazon because of that implied

trust that comes with Amazon space.

So there's a cost, but there's definitely benefits traffic and conversion rate or.

And then I imagine like, whatever description you put in or summary

also is beneficial as far as people finding your product, Cause the thing with

Amazon is there's so many things on there.

Like how are they going to, if they're searching something in

the search box on Amazon, how are they going to find your thing?

Unless they put in the exact.

if it's a book, for example, they put it in the exact

wording or something like that.

So it is a search.

Yeah.

it is a big search engine that is obviously e-commerce platforms.

They basically have both sides of the picture here.

It used to be just like any other search engine that you'd basically need to do

SEO where you're, you know, the search engine optimization basically where you

are intentionally putting in terminology and phrases and keywords in order to

get the search engine to see your.

Amazon has developed artificial intelligence machine learning for

years, they've had that available and it's gotten really smart.

So what used to be, you know, just a few years ago, it used to be a best practice

of just like any other search engine.

Like Google is where you're trying to basically stuff in words, in

order to get picked up and seen and listed by the search engine.

Amazon already knows who your target audience is, what product

you're selling and what your.

Too, you don't actually have to tell it anymore.

You still have to put it in the right department, you know, the right category.

You still have to have, you know, some obvious things as far as some kind

of a main search term and your title.

So that shoppers recognize, oh yeah, this is actually similar to the product.

But these days, a lot of what I teach and I do live workshops and that kind stuff.

Is really speaking to the benefits.

What's in it for me to the consumer in all the different content pieces.

Images, video title description bullet points feature bullet points.

You really have to be talking to the consumer and Hey,

I understand your problem.

We've solved the problem.

Here's what you're going to get out of owning this product.

It's not simply like a list of specifications and stuff, keywords.

Like it was even just a couple of years ago even is definitely has evolved.

So that the better job you do at focusing in, on your target audience and

speaking to them, the more engagement or clicks that you get through to

your listing, the more conversion and more orders you get from your listing.

So that's the big push now is how do you properly position both in

advertising, but also how do you properly optimize your product each of

your product listings to really speak to your target, that specific target?

Okay.

And then as far as advertising within Amazon maybe it depends on

what type of product you're selling.

Cause I know when I was selling books, there were like two options on how to

advertise paid advertising within Amazon.

But in general, what are, different ways to advertise.

And do you find that advertising within Amazon versus outside of

Amazon is more bang for your buck?

I guess.

So as far as the different advertising types that you

can do on Amazon, there's a couple of different things, actually.

There's about 30 Placements that we can actually do on

Amazon's native advertising.

So Amazon actually has two ad platforms.

They're on Amazon advertising and they're off Amazon advertising off Amazon is

like retargeting remarketing type of ads that follow you around on different

Amazon partnered or owned sites, right?

Domains, the on Amazon advertising there.

I won't go into too much detail on this, but there's, three different

types of ad types that you can build that target things like that, where

you, the Amazon make the choice as far as like where the ad is being shown.

And that can be in, if somebody does a search, a keyword search, there's

going to be search results and you can have ads on that page that can include,

just simply just showing a product.

It can show a video.

You know, maybe a, a brand, you know, branded video that shows up there are so

there's different assets, different types of ads that can display on the search

results inside of each product detail page, basically where a product is sold.

You can have you know, as they're shown, you know, the show, a product, it can show

a brand name, it can show a brand video.

It can show like I said, there's a bunch of different ones that you can, you can

show to kind of showcase your product or your brand to shoppers who are currently

on somebody else's product details.

On their product page.

Now, of course they can do the same thing back to you.

So there's both an offense and defensive strategy that you can do on this.

But you can target things.

You can let Amazon choose.

You can target specific keyword phrases.

You can with different kinds of match types, which is common among.

You know, pay-per-click type of advertising platforms.

You can target other products, whether those are direct competitors,

you can cross market your own products in your advertising.

You can target products that are in line with your target audience

that may not necessarily even.

your own products, you can kind of build your market share and get out to a bigger

piece of your audience who, some of it's kind of like the, you know, the impulse

aisle, you know, the impulse checkout is stand at a grocery store, for instance,

like you didn't realize you need it until you're standing there waiting to check

out with your product and I'm going, oh, I need this, I forgot about it.

You know, it's more of an impulse buy.

You can also do.

Category's entire academy, you know, you can just say like, I'm going to shotgun

and to say advertise this entire category.

And each one of those, there are different Amazon continues to add on year, over

year, they continue to add on more detail and options for us to choose from.

Not only for how specific the search was by, you know, the

keyword search was by the.

It could be is the product that you're trying to run an ad on.

An above average rating or below average rating, is the pricing

much higher or much lower?

Does it have prime shipping or does it not have prime shipping?

You can run ads that target audience lifestyle, they're, they're in

this part of the country or in this age group, those kinds of things.

So it continues to get more and more.

Evolved and more complex, but the way I see it and the way my team sees it

is everything new that they in is a new, it's a new opportunity in order

to it's that blue ocean opportunity where most other sellers brands,

products on selling on Amazon will be slow to take advantage of those.

So early adopters, it's that early bird gets the worm, kind of thing.

we're early adopters definitely get a competitive advantage The second platform,

Amazon display a demand side platform with a called DSP is generally for brands that

are selling at least a hundred thousand dollars a month on Amazon or bigger.

Not that that's a minimum requirement.

We just find that it works best because then you're going off of Amazon.

Your conversion rates are lower.

You're at click through from consumers is lower, but it

gives you a number of options.

It's more advanced.

Demographic and psychographic type of targeting that you'd

have on some other ad platforms.

You have the ability to attract a shopper back who maybe purchased

your product previously.

And now you're introducing a new version or a different color.

You could even run ads to say, Hey, you know what?

You didn't buy my product or even better.

You didn't buy you my competitors product, come back and look at my listing.

It's a better alternative.

there's a huge amount of options.

That brands can take advantage of it.

And it's not like you do a hundred percent, you do what is

appropriate for your product niche.

And the more competitive is the more testing you've got to do to make sure

it's like, okay, I can't run all the ads.

You can't run all 30 ad type placements, but these six

seemed to work for my product.

you had mentioned prime.

I, a lot of times when I'm searching for something and I'm trying to decide between

different products, I click on prime as kind of one of the things to narrow down.

So anything that's prime, that's actually something that's in

an Amazon warehouse, I guess.

It can be both a warehouse or your own warehouse.

The difference is there's a high Amazon has got some big rules when

it comes to this kind of stuff.

Prime is an example of that, where you could have your own private warehouse

that ships out on your behalf.

However, to be qualified as prime shipping, you have to be able to

ship seven days a week and be able to deliver within two or three.

And so that can be pretty expensive for an independent warehouse

to have a seven day operation.

most warehouses are five day operation.

They're not 70 operation.

you had mentioned like rankings.

What are some good ways to rank

So ranking on Amazon is usually one of its primary drivers.

Now there's a bunch of different things that, influence like any, platform.

There's a bunch of different things that influence.

Ranking or where a product shows up in search results.

Ranking on Amazon is primarily led by just the number of

units that you move each day.

Now, if you sell a $10 product, you're likely going to move a lot more units,

then you're going to be, then if you sell a hundred dollar product, however

it is relative to your specific sub.

You have your product niche that you ran.

So if everybody sells a hundred dollar product than you're within the norm,

the, the speed or the velocity that you're selling units is probably the

same as what others are Things can influence the speed at which you sell

price is certainly is one of them.

And I don't recommend dropping your price.

I recommend showcasing or emphasizing the benefit and the value of the

product that you're trying to sell.

talk to your consumer, you know, actually tell them what's in it for them.

If they buy your product, even if your product is $20, more

expensive than somebody else's.

So you're trying to increase the conversion rate, which is a big focus

of an agency like ours is how do you first increase the conversion rate?

Because that's going to make things more profitable.

Overall, it's going to increase the sales velocity that influences things like

keyword ranking, far as your rank results.

So a number of things is just, but Lee, I would say lead with.

Number of units that you sell, the conversion rate that you sell at.

In other words you know, you get all this traffic, but is it actually

converting you know, quickly.

And then of course, social proof also contributes to conversion rate things

like, do you have five star reviews?

Do you have five reviews versus 5,000 reviews for your product?

You know, what do people say?

What are, what is highlighted in the.

two or three reviews, the Amazon shows out of those 5,000, are they positive?

Are they negative?

You know, all these things can influence create either doubt or confusion to a

shopper and ultimately kick them off.

It's the same thing with any e-commerce platform.

If you sell a product online, if at any point you or some other factor

introduces doubt or confusion.

They're going to bounce.

They're going to move on.

They're going to keep looking because they're just not sure.

Yeah.

And you had mentioned reviews.

That was another thing I was going to ask about what are some

tips as far as getting reviews?

Cause like with my books on Amazon, I think I have like six reviews.

Well, Each one has about five or six and yeah, it's hard to get reviews.

Usually what we recommend to, our clients is Amazon

has gotten a lot of scrutiny about its review system and lot of criticism

in both social media and the press.

As far as you know, how it's been manipulated somebody who used to hack

the database and expose the fact that there were about 20 big brands selling

on Amazon and the electronic space that they could basically show, the

trail of them manipulating reviews by essentially incentivizing reviews saying

like, I'm going to give you something.

If you give me a five-star review, which is an absolute, against terms

of service on Amazon, Amazon had no choice because they got a bunch of heat

congressmen were notified and TV stations were notified and everything, right?

So that's, that's how you get things done on Amazon is put

some pressure on them, socially.

And across those 20 brands of electronic big electronic manufacturers,

Amazon had to remove them.

And that was hundreds of millions of dollars each month in revenue on Amazon.

And Amazon was forced to kick them off because of social.

in order to, you know, like, are we actually, are we paying

them playing favoritism?

They don't want to seem like they're playing favoritism, but

sometimes they absolutely are.

But this time they got caught and they got showcased and, they

basically had to adapt to it.

But reviews has come down to not as simply not incentivizing, not saying,

Hey, can you give me a five star review?

But it really comes down to if you sell it.

And you ship a product, you can talk to your shopper through things that you

put into your packaging, for instance, and again, you don't want to have, card

inserts to say, Hey, you know what, I'm going to give you a free gift,

or something like that, or pay you in order to give me a five star review

that again, of course you get caught and you're, you're off the platform.

If you take the time as a brand to start a conversation with your consumer, it's

the thing that most lazy brands won't do.

It's like, cause it takes more work.

It's more customer service when you actually start that conversation.

actually.

Talk to them and actually care about their experience and have that conversation.

They're naturally going to see that in the experience and the followup that they get.

It's not a simple, like, Hey, we hope you like it.

Can you give us a review?

No, that's not the right conversation.

It's more of a case of, is there anything, do you need any kind of support?

Did you see this video on how to use this?

Did you know that there was this warranty, registration?

You can get to make sure if anything goes wrong, you're covered,

educating the consumer of how.

Much you're going to bend over backwards as a brand to support your product.

That will be evident in the reviews that you get not easy to do on books

or t-shirts, it's more of a case.

if you ship a book, Hey, join my Facebook community and my LinkedIn group or

whatever the case is of people who are fans of this book who want to learn more

and see my new material that I'm putting out, that would be probably a good way.

And then every once in a while you can say, Hey, you know what?

It would be really helpful if some of you who bought my book on Amazon would

go out there and actually leave a review.

It really helped me a lot, Cause they care about if you care about them,

they're going to care about you.

And then if you ask.

For their participation, then you'll get some of them that will actually do it,

but you have to start that conversation right from the product, and if it's

a book it's got to be, probably be a printed page somewhere that says,

Hey, come out and join my community

at the end of my books.

I do have something about.

if you enjoy this book, feel free to leave a review or something like that.

And at the end of my podcast, I do the same thing.

I don't know how many reviews actually happen from that, but it doesn't hurt.

Well, you can also engage to, somebody who sells a,

makeup, a beauty product, for instance, there's, you know what, I'm going to

have a private training session with a.

I don't know the terminology cosmetologist or whatever, you know, and we're going

to go through this technique, using this product for those of you who have

led review, for us, I'm going to invite you to be in this private session.

That thing can also be like, if you have some kind of expertise that you carried

forward in your book, then, you know, maybe it's like, I'm going to do a private

Q and a session, you know, ask me anything for everybody who's left a review.

those are kind of ways that things ended up now.

Can you believe that?

But you're kind of saying like, Hey, do me a favor and I'll get you in this,

close, secret room that I'm going to do and you can fire away questions

and we can have a conversation.

I guess it's just, you can't pay someone for a review

or maybe even offer like a gift card or something that has money involved.

But something like,

yeah, nor can.

Amazon generally says like, you can ask for an Ana unbiased.

Honest review.

You can add no way.

Can you say, Hey, I need you give me at least a four or five star review.

Now there's some companies out there who have actually set up call centers

and will actually call the customers and say, Hey, and have that conversation.

Well, it's kind of hard to report a conversation, a private conversation of.

People game the system, you know, especially the larger brands that you

know, can afford to do a call center, not the independent seller or, you know, a

book author for instance, but at the same time, know, maybe it's one of those things

where, you know, you do, depending on.

a book publisher, maybe you do an ask me anything or a Q and

a, or, Hey, here's a new update.

I want to give to something that's not in the book that I want to

give you a new, fresh update on join me, live on this date.

And then in that conversation, it's like, you know what?

Can I have, as many of you possible go out and just leave a review.

Do me a favor.

Give me a, give me some love here.

I'm I'm here for you.

Give me some love over here, cause that's actually going to help quite

a bit and help build our community so we can have bigger discussions and

I can do this again in the future.

tit for tat, you know, it's a, it's a you know, it just helped

me support, Trying to come in and say, Hey, do do something for me.

And I'll give you something back.

It's more of a case of I've given you a bunch of value.

You already love my product.

You already love my book.

I'm giving you a live Q and a session.

may be on social media.

Do me a favor, let's see how many of us can get out there and leave a review.

In fact, I'm going to do a drawing or something.

you could incentivize it that way, but you probably shouldn't need to They just

wanted the chance to have a conversations that, you know, I did have one question.

What about this thing here?

Or what new piece of information or new technique can you tell me about that?

those are some good tips and strategies and creative ways to

hopefully get more reviews and whatnot.

One of the last things I want to ask about, I noticed this on your

website somewhere, something about golden nugget keywords, what does

that mean?

there's two different things.

One is there's, some terminology that I use regarding gold panning campaigns,

but there's also the, I actually did for a fundraising for operation underground

railroad, Phenomenal charitable group to basically goes out and essentially

hunts down abducted kids in other countries and then brings them back.

Phenomenal organization independent of any government.

But we actually did this whole thing where it was the golden

nuggets, promotion for this charity.

And so we created these, you know, everybody who was an expert in the field

participated and we basically said, okay, what are your golden nuggets?

So it could be one or the other.

It could be the golden nuggets for that charitable event, or

it could be my gold panning.

My gold panning techniques have to do with creating ad campaigns on Amazon,

which are primarily low bid low cost per click or low bid keywords or product

ads or category ads or videos that are designed to essentially the way that

I frame those is your competitors.

Won't always run ads They run out of ad budget.

They run out of stock and so their advertising stops.

And so as long as you've got this low level set of ad campaigns that

always run at a lower bid, you know, you're not very competitive.

There's going to be different times of the day, different times a week during

times of the month year, whatever that your ads are actually going to.

And usually they're going to show at a very low cost.

And so your return on ad spend is huge.

it's not going to blow up your sales and it's not something you launch

with, but at the same time, it's very profitable from an ad campaign strategy.

So that is one of the things they do teach publicly is set up these base campaigns.

And I can tell you is that, I've coached over 20,000 brands in

my career, selling on Amazon.

And I would say maybe 5% actually use these techniques, even though

it works phenomenally well, that's just one example of something very

few, actually take the time and the average to implement things like this.

Kind of the nature of Amazon and how much competition is on there is also, you got

a lot of weak competition on there that there's a lot of ways to work around them

yeah.

I think that was probably what it was that I was inquiring about.

That's interesting.

Awesome.

Well, I appreciate your time today.

And if people want to learn more, they can go to canopy management.com.

I'll also have show notes at the Sarah St.

john.com forward slash Brian R.

Johnson.

And was there anything else that you wanted to go over that we hadn't yet?

No, I would say that probably just for, you know,

there's a lot of different e-commerce entrepreneurs out there and some of them

are selling exclusively on things like Shopify or other e-commerce channels.

And just a lack of understanding.

Shouldn't be a reason to be in other sales channels.

There's plenty of information out there.

That's available on YouTube and you know, my own material regarding

advertising and product positioning.

It is.

such a huge monster of a traffic platform that if you do sell a product and

you're not selling it on Amazon, this is the year to reconsider that and say,

okay, maybe I need to add something on and, and take some time to get past.

If nothing else.

I mean, say you have a Shopify store, maybe put one of your products on

Amazon and compare and contrast which one are you making more money on?