Amazon Entrepreneur's Guide: Innovations, Advertising Tactics, and Selling Success

Embark on an entrepreneurial adventure with Kusha Karvandi, a trailblazer in the realm of Amazon e-commerce, who joins us in this episode to unravel the secrets of his astounding success. From his initial step into the competitive world of Amazon with BFR Bands to his latest revolutionary software, Kazam, Kusha's journey is a testament to the power of innovation and strategic thinking. Discover how this Inc 500 entrepreneur transitioned from managing a health club to dominating the massage gun market with his brand Vibe, and gain insights into the nuanced decisions that lead to selling businesses while maintaining a profitable seller account.

Kusha isn't just about creating top-selling products; he's also a pioneer in optimizing Amazon advertising campaigns. With Kazam, his AI-driven SaaS tool, he's changing the game for sellers seeking to boost profitability and climb the organic rankings. Tune in to learn how this sophisticated platform can manage your PPC campaigns by weighing a product's organic placement, ensuring your advertising spend is as smart as your business decisions. Plus, get a peek into the evolution of this software, designed to grow with you and your Amazon store by integrating crucial feedback from its users.

In this episode, we also tackle actionable strategies to amplify your brand presence on Amazon. Kusha delves into the intricacies of keyword placement, the effectiveness of A-plus content, and the strategic benefits of the Amazon Transparency program. Whether you're a rookie or a veteran in the e-commerce space, these tactics will sharpen your approach to niche selling and fortify your intellectual property investments. So, if you're ready to elevate your Amazon business and ride the wave of e-commerce success, this conversation is the resource you've been waiting for.

For more information about Kazam, please visit https://gokazam.com/  
For more information about Phelps United, please visit https://phelpsunited.com/  

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Planet Amazon podcast with Adam Shaffer, where we explore the world of Amazon and other e-commerce marketplaces. Join us as we delve into the latest strategies and tactics for successful selling on the world's largest online marketplace.

Adam Shaffer: 0:18

Hello everybody, I'm Adam Shaffer and welcome to Planet Amazon, where we talk about all things Amazon. I am super excited for our episode today because we have a great guest. His name is Kusha Karvandi and he's an Inc 500 entrepreneur with remarkable history of launching and exiting several seven and eight figure e-commerce businesses, so this could be a lot to learn from him. He has over a decade of experience in scaling brands on Amazon, and Kusha has mastered the art of driving sales through advanced marketing strategies, data analysis and impactful branding. But he's got a new venture, and his recent venture is Kazam. It's a revolutionary AI-based SaaS tool and it's transforming the way Amazon advertising campaigns are optimized. It offers users significant profitability and organic ranking improvements. Now he'll talk more about that and I'm really interested about that. But first, welcome to the show and thanks for joining us today, kusha. Awesome Thank you for having me. So first of all, where are you? I keep on forgetting.

Kusha Karvandi: 1:23

Yeah, I'm in Scottsdale Arizona.

Adam Shaffer: 1:25

Ah, so soon to be super hot. So there's so much I want to talk about, and I definitely you know selfishly. I want to talk about the SaaS platform because what you offer is what I need, and what I need, I think, is what tons of other 1P and 3P sellers need, and that's help in getting more from our advertising. But tell us a little bit about you and how you got into this, and tell us about some of these businesses that you built and sold.

Kusha Karvandi: 1:53

Sure, yeah, the journey started a little over a decade ago. My experience has always been working in the gyms. At the time, I was a health club manager and personal trainer back then, did that for about five to 10 years, and then, basically, I had seen an article in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning for something called blood flow restriction training, which I thought was such a weird concept. I thought, why would you ever want to restrict blood flow during exercise? And as I went further down the rabbit hole, I realized that there was actually a lot of research behind this methodology and how it was. You know, helping people not only with rehab, as well as muscle gain and whatnot, and you know, being able to make gains while lifting light weights. And so I basically decided that, you know, I wanted to create a product for something like this, because I couldn't see anything in the marketplace that existed People in the bodybuilding community were using, like wrist wraps and knee wraps and such, and so I thought, you know what there needs to be, something that's a little bit easier, that you can, you know, tie by yourself almost like a tourniquet with one hand. And so my wife and I, you know, we designed something very, very simple in the beginning, a simple strap, and we didn't know anything about e-commerce at the time. And so we I think it was really my wife who discovered Amazon FBA and we just kind of by, just by accident, really just kind of launched on there because, just it's a little bit easier. You know, as as most Amazon sellers probably know, it's a little bit easier to get traffic initially from Amazon than it is to launch your own Shopify store and try to launch Facebook ads or TikTok ads and so forth. There's a little bit more, you know, nuance to do that versus Amazon. Especially back then it wasn't quite as competitive as it is obviously now. That was a great launchpad.

Kusha Karvandi: 3:30

I was able to get that brand off the ground. It was called BFR Bands and we ran that brand for, you know, I think we ran it for like five, six years, you know, almost seven years, before we sold it. We sold it, I think, in 2020. And yeah, that was my first. That was actually my second exit. I exited a different brand before that, which I'll mention in a second, but yeah, basically it was a wild ride because it started as like a side hustle that I was doing that while working in the gyms, then ended up leaving that job doing some consulting, and my Amazon business was still a side business at the time and then eventually, just over the course of a year or two, it became a full-time thing and I focused on that business pretty much full-time.

Kusha Karvandi: 4:12

And then, by chance, we kind of saw an opportunity to launch a product in the massage gun space and that was called Vibe and that was kind of a competitor to Theragun. And this is like when massage guns were like early and new and you know, this is, you know, probably six years ago, seven years ago, and, yeah, basically ran that for about 18 months. We scaled that brand to about eight figures, like within 12 months or so, and we sold it 18 months after creating it in 2019. So that one was kind of a strange deal because I built it to be separate from the BFR bands brand. I kind of set that up as a separate brand, separate thing so that I could separate it from the core products, because it was a little bit different and it was more ancillary than you know, a core product to BFR bands.

Kusha Karvandi: 4:59

So I exited that and then, yeah, 2020 sold the bfr bands. Um, then I? I, when I sold the bfr bands brand, I actually kept the um, my seller account and the products in it at that time, which is not I don't think it's common when you sell yeah, no, you sold the brand, but you didn't sell the the 3p account I didn't sell the account, yeah, which is not as common, I think.

Kusha Karvandi: 5:20

Probably the buyer kind of regretted that at the time. I think they were just very I think they're very anxious to buy the products. You know, at the time they really were trying to grow and buy as many brands as they could, so they were making a lot of different deals that they probably aren't doing now. But, yeah, I ended up. I was able to keep the account and so I kept. I excluded a lot of other brands of mine and I didn't have a ton of existing brands outside of that, but I did have some other, you know, smaller, different brands, all in the health and wellness space that I'd kept and I added some new brands to it after I exited in 2020. And then basically scaled some of those and scaled some of the new ones and the existing ones, and then I sold that portfolio of brands in 2021.

Kusha Karvandi: 6:05

It was about a year. Almost a year and a half later it was ended 2021. And then, yeah, basically so that was my third exit and then I at that time I did have to sell the seller account ended up creating a new seller account. I did keep some SKUs, so I didn't, even though I sold the seller account. I didn't sell all of the SKUs again. I did retain a few SKUs, a handful, that were very minimal. And then again, same thing, 2021,. I launched a series of new brands and I still have this seller account. Now scaled that to over seven figures, now multiple seven figures in the last year and a half, almost two years now.

Adam Shaffer: 6:43

So you've been selling on Amazon all along the way with different brands. These are, would be, private label brands that your products, your proprietary stuff. You started in the gym. You're a gym entrepreneur and you came up with a bunch of great health and fitness products. Yeah, exactly, the restricting blood flow. You'll have to tell me about some time, but I don't know how that works. But I remember when I was a kid we used to kind of joke each other until we passed out. I don't think that's recommended, but anyway, it was kind of pretty stupid, but that's great, I mean incredible success. When you were starting these businesses, were you starting them with the thought that you were going to sell them or were you just starting them with the thing like this is cool, I can make some money?

Kusha Karvandi: 7:29

No, I started it because I was at the time, you know, um, my wife and I we've been together since high school. We've been together since, uh, you know, 21 years now, and so we got married young, we got married and we were like 20 I was 23, I think she was 22 um, so, yeah, we, we basically have always kind of been of the mindset that, like, eventually, we'd want to, like you know, raise a family and be able to be free and do our own thing. I knew I had to get out of this. You know the gym industry anyone who's worked in the gyms as a trainer and health clubs knows that the it's quite a hustle. You're there for long hours.

Kusha Karvandi: 7:57

And at the time I was managing I was managing a gym in downtown San Diego called Fit Athletic which is kind of like a equinox, so kind of like a equinox, so kind of like a lifetime pretty large gym. I had like 70 employees. You know it was a 50,000 square foot facility. It was a really, really big headache of a gym. I had like 30 trainers. It was a lot and I was training. You know, I wasn't getting paid to train but I just love training so much I had a few clients. I was training myself to just to kind of lead by example and that sort of thing.

Kusha Karvandi: 8:24

And yeah, it was just as a lot of hours. I would literally get up sometimes at 3 am and get ready, go to work 5 am when they open, get home at like 7 pm and I would do that like six and a half days a week. Like the only day I really took off is maybe Sunday, and even then I was still kind of going in there. So I was working a lot and, you know, my wife and I were like there's no way we're going to, how are we going to raise a family like this? And she was working full-time too, for a different employer, and so I'm like this is just not going to work. We got to find a way out of this and sure enough.

Kusha Karvandi: 8:51

And I think one of the best things I did was working at that gym, because I was working in downtown San Diego and you meet a lot of these entrepreneurs at the gym, a lot of successful people, and some of the people I met were in e-commerce and I was like this one guy, a friend of mine, this guy Drew, he was in the gym like three times a day. I'm like what's this guy? This guy's like not working ever. He's in the gym three times a day. What's he doing?

Speaker 1: 9:12

here. I'm like this guy's killing it.

Kusha Karvandi: 9:14

Yeah, I'm like how is this possible? It was like just you know it of attraction I don't know what it is Something you know really brought me to connect with these different entrepreneurs and, and you know, the rest was kind of history. I ended up connecting with a few of them and then ended up getting some mentorship from a few different you know good entrepreneurs, e-commerce entrepreneurs, and and so I just I knew that long-term, I'm like, if I want to have, like have freedom of lifestyle and freedom of time and freedom of geography to be able to live where I wanted to live or travel or whatever it may be, I can't be tied down to trading my time for money in a job like this. I got to get into something where I'm working for myself. E-commerce is great because you can do it from anywhere.

Adam Shaffer: 10:00

What a story. What a great story and very inspirational. That is the American dream, right Like this is it? You know, and that's what I love about Amazon, and you know there's about two million believe it or not sellers on the platform. Outside of brands that sell to Amazon.

Adam Shaffer: 10:16

There's a bunch of us, you and others that are selling and building a business, and in the old days, if you wanted to start selling retail, you had to go rent a store and get out a store and get all that. But now you can, if you, if you know the game and you can play the game right, you could build a business on Amazon and then you could port it over and do a Shopify or do something like that. So I think it's, it's just, it is great and it's great for entrepreneurs that want to build a brand and build a business. So thank you for your inspiration to you know from from me and from everybody. So you got to help me understand how did you bridge from building products to now building software? Because that's what I think your platform is. It's software that helps people build their business.

Kusha Karvandi: 11:00

Yeah, and basically, I've been wanting to build a SaaS software for a long time, just because I love software. I love, I love software, I love different tools that can help make your business more efficient. And again, it goes back to anything that can help you have more freedom of your lifestyle and freedom of time. Because I was doing everything we do, I knew that, you know, I need to build something, you know, with AI built into it. Obviously that's a trendy thing right now, but I also, you know, wanted to build something that you know was going to have longevity to it and become kind of an evergreen tool that people would be able to use and make it evolve. You know, I see a lot of softwares I've used where they haven't really they get lazy with it. The owners don't change anything, there's no real, you know, reiterations of anything new, no features for a long time.

Kusha Karvandi: 11:55

So with this I already, kind of when I built the software, I actually mapped out like 10 new features that I want to launch, you know, step by step. First, I don't want to overcomplicate it and make the user experience too complex. So in the beginning I have just one core feature, but over time we're going to drip out new things as well, as I want to be able to take user feedback quickly. We have a lot of integrations we can talk about to connect us with the end user so we can get critical feedback of what do they want to see, what things can we improve or add or change, so we can move really, really quickly with this and launch new things. So, in a nutshell, what is Kazam? Give us that core thing, so we get it. Yeah, so Kazam is basically an AI-based Amazon advertising software that takes a combination of AI and all the rule sets that I've used to manually run ads for myself and clients over the last decade to basically run your entire Amazon PPC for you, and the unique aspect of it that it does that no other PPC software does that I've seen is that it takes into account your organic rankings of your products.

Kusha Karvandi: 12:58

So, as we've seen over time, amazon's just gotten more and more expensive. The PPC costs keep going up. They have new fees. If you have inventory in storage for too long, they charge you fees, and now if you have inventory in storage not enough in storage they charge you fees. They're charging you fees everywhere, every which way they can go, and it makes sense. It's a public company, they have to make sure to continually find ways to add revenue and I think they're going to always find ways to get more out of third-party sellers, inevitably over time.

Kusha Karvandi: 13:28

So I thought with this, if we can factor in your organic rankings, then we can customize your bids and your budgets so that you're not spending as much on things that might be redundant. If you're selling a dog leash, for example, and you show up really well for a dog leash for large dogs and you're already, if you're selling a dog leash, for example, and you show up really well for dog leash for large dogs and you're already at top of search, then maybe it doesn't make sense to also run PPC for top of search. That might be super competitive and expensive for a keyword that you're already ranking for. I mean certainly you obviously can do that if it benefits you and you're getting a halo effect or, you know, increased brand awareness and exposure to do both. But usually I find when I cut certain ads or I have those redundancy, I end up maintaining the sales. So it leads me to believe I didn't really even need to run those ads or at least certainly not at the bid cost that I was in order to maintain the same revenue.

Adam Shaffer: 14:20

So I want to make sure I got this right. So I have a product I'm ranking I don't know 150 on the BSR for my subcategory, whatever it is, and your software is following the ranking, looking for ways to increase the ranking obviously the goal to get to number one or number five or whatever it would be and so I'm trying to wrap my head around this thing. So what is it actually doing? It's trying to find this word will help you increase your rank.

Kusha Karvandi: 14:49

Yeah, exactly, it's basically doing a few things. It's looking at where you are, so it's driving the bids and the bid adjustment is being driven until you reach basically top 10 rankings. Until you reach basically top 10 rankings. So once you get to the top 10, which we know that that is where you're going to see a significant threshold and difference in conversion. Organically, that's when it starts backing off the bids, it starts bringing that cost down.

Adam Shaffer: 15:18

So it's like a governor or something. It'll get you up to 10 or 8 or whatever it is, and then it'll take the pedal off the gas a little bit and then maybe you'll put the pedal back on the gas and it just keeps on moderating to keep you and optimizing to keep you in that top 10.

Kusha Karvandi: 15:35

It's like cruise control, basically on a car, like you know, the car in front of you speeds up Yep exactly.

Adam Shaffer: 15:42

So so how? I mean how does it work? First of all, did you write this Are you a software developer?

Kusha Karvandi: 15:52

No, I wrote basically all the rule sets and the concepts behind it and then I worked with a team of software engineers and a UX UI designer to basically put it all together and, design-wise, I think that it still has a lot I think can be improved. I want to continually make it better. That you know. It still has a lot I think can be improved. You know I I want to continually make it better. Um, but in terms of functionality, it functions flawlessly. It functions exactly how I expected it to and I think over time, like just like we've seen with ai it just gets better over time as it learns so is it like an api that it connects to seller central advertising and you manage.

Adam Shaffer: 16:22

You manage in the software, you don't manage on Amazon. Once you do that right.

Kusha Karvandi: 16:25

Yep, exactly, yeah, you manage everything in the software, yep, and we even added recently added a new functionality where you can basically pull in your existing campaigns. So if you're a seller who's already had a ton of campaigns that you've been already running and you want to apply some of the rule sets inside the software and have it kind of go on autopilot in the software, you can do that. You can pull those in in your dashboard and you can set those rule sets and it will automatically apply it with regard to like min and max, bid and target, roas or ACOS and that sort of thing.

Adam Shaffer: 16:57

What's the difference? I mean not to you know, we haven't talked about this, but what's the difference between your software and, like you know, I've done, like you know, the Helium 10 and I've done Sellazo and done Feedvisor and all these others, and some you have to pay a fee for and some it's just a platform. What's the big difference, what is the major differential between your software and all these other softwares?

Kusha Karvandi: 17:28

Yeah, I would say three main things. I would say number one cost. I mean, cost is something that, as an Amazon seller, I'm always conscious of, because every time I add a software, I feel like I'm getting gouged another $500 or $1,000.

Adam Shaffer: 17:41

Me too, man.

Kusha Karvandi: 17:43

So, yeah, cost was a big consideration and so for most sellers they're probably going to, depending on how much they're spending. They're probably going to be on the $200 plan, you know, 200 bucks a month. So for 200 bucks a month it's like having somebody run all your PPC and that's hard to find an employee who can run your PPC for 200 bucks a month. So, you know, cost is a big consideration.

Kusha Karvandi: 18:07

The second was what I mentioned in terms of the organic rankings and managing that profitability for you. And then the third is just really how uh, you know how it's just really dynamic in terms of the campaigns it's building. So it's not just like running one campaign, it's going to run and create a series of campaigns. And then one thing it also does is it will automatically do things for you that you don't need to do manually, like in the past I would manually have to go through and look at like converting, high converting search terms, and I would take those search terms and put them in new campaigns and just to get more granular and increase profitability. And the software will do all that automatically. It'll identify search terms that are actual customer search terms that are converting, or ASINs that are converting, and it will create new campaigns to target those specifically to help you get a little bit more profitable and scale up.

Adam Shaffer: 18:52

So for a brand you can have multiple different campaigns running and it decides if it's a new campaign or not, or you decide.

Kusha Karvandi: 19:02

No, it will decide. It will basically create a series of campaigns when you launch. Basically, we have like one type of theme. It's called the quick start theme. That's the initial theme that you'll see in there when you sign up, and this is designed for someone to basically I don't want to say set it and forget it, you know, because you never really want to do that with your ads, but that's kind of what it's designed to do.

Kusha Karvandi: 19:22

Is you just somebody who wants to really focus on what they're good at, which is the marketing and the product development and the customer service and that sort of thing? Focus on that. Let the software really focus on the ads. And so you just click a button, you select your SKU that you want to advertise and all you have to do is basically put in like a couple of parameters like minimum, maximum bid and basically your target ACOS for that, based on whatever your margins are, and that's it. You click that, it turns that SKU on and now, with that SKU on being in advertised mode, with that being enabled, the system will start creating new campaigns for that specific SKU and then, over time, it will keep creating new campaigns based on the performance.

Adam Shaffer: 20:05

And the level of expertise within Seller, Central and advertising. Is this for a basic novice that could get it going and start using this thing?

Kusha Karvandi: 20:15

Yeah, I designed it for beginners beginner to intermediate that's who it's really mainly designed for. But then even myself, being much more of an advanced seller, having done this for a long time, I've added other things in there, other customizations. If you want to get more granular, you can. You can actually go in there. If you want something that's, let's say, you're a beginner and you're like, okay, I just want to get this up and running, you can get it up and running in a couple clicks. You just pick your skew, you add those three, three variables like your, your min and max bid and a target, a cost, and you're up and running. That's it.

Kusha Karvandi: 20:48

Uh, but if you're somebody who's like you, know what I need to get a little more granular, I want to get in there. I have a little more experience with advertising. You can do that. You can go in there and you can target certain competitors. You can put in things around your brand. If you want to target certain keywords, you can put negative targeting. If you're like, okay, I want it for sure, I want to have negative exact for these certain keywords or ASINs, you can go in there and do day parting, seasonality, all of that you can go in there.

Adam Shaffer: 21:14

Could you have it do that for you, like, without knowing how to do the day parting, without knowing how to do the negative campaigns. Could you say I want a negative campaign, I want to do day parting and it figures it out?

Kusha Karvandi: 21:29

Some of that it will do by itself, but the seasonality and the day parting is not automated yet. That's something that you know. Yeah, I haven't really experimented enough around that to know whether that would help or hurt, and so, yeah, I don't know if we want to launch with that yet. But again, yeah, this is all. This is a feedback oriented system. So if users say, hey, you know what I would love if you could make some of these features you know more automated, then we will certainly do that and we're going to obviously be gathering a lot of data too and we'll be able to see you know hey, this is this would be a safe feature to make automated.

Adam Shaffer: 21:55

Do you find the people that are using it continually ask more questions, or do you think they're figuring it out on their own? Do they need?

Kusha Karvandi: 22:04

hand-holding. Yeah, no, I would say most sellers are pretty silent when it comes to their business. They don't really ask for enough help and I'm always happy to be a resource and, you know, and help the community and anybody who's watching this. To anyone who reaches out, I'm happy to answer any questions and help in any way I can, because I know the struggle. I know, especially as I've seen a lot of these forums and Facebook groups the majority of comments and sentiment I see around selling on Amazon.

Kusha Karvandi: 22:31

Just it gets worse over time. People get more frustrated and I know the feeling of the black hole of seller support, the sabotage by the Chinese sellers and such and other sellers who you know seem to play by a different set of rules, and so I know the feeling. And so I feel like, because of all that, that sellers are generally kind of just doing it on their own. They're not asking for help, but definitely ask for help. I think that's a mistake. It's always good to you know, figure out what needs to be done and don't use the Amazon seller forums as a way to get help, or, you know, or ask questions or vent. I feel like that's a pretty useless place.

Adam Shaffer: 23:06

Oh wow, that's good advice and so when it comes like some of the software that's out there, you can get like a managed version of it where they help you and they'll have somebody. Do you do that or you don't need to do that with your software.

Kusha Karvandi: 23:19

With no, with ours, you don't. I mean we do offer, you know, different plans and some of them offer, you know, higher levels of support. But, honestly, in any, any of the packages right now, you know, because we are fairly new right now, you know you'll have increased, you know, basically access to me and my customer support team. So, anything that somebody needs, if they have questions, you know we're going to offer them more support. If they're on the higher plan, obviously they're going to have a little bit more. You know, facetime with us and that sort of thing if they need it. But honestly, they don't really need it.

Kusha Karvandi: 23:46

I mean, it's pretty straightforward. The functionality of the software is designed. I designed it to be very, very easy because I didn't want it to be so complex where you get confused, and because when you get confused, you don't, you don't take action, you get paralyzed. So I wanted something where you can, you know, get in there, you know, select your SKU and get going and that's it, and let the system do the work for you, cause that's really what the point of the software is.

Adam Shaffer: 24:09

So a lot of this is. You know we're talking about PPC. Is there any advice to the listeners and sellers on amazon on uh affecting their organic rankings, like is it just to make sure your content's good, and blah, blah, blah? What anything you could say on organic?

Kusha Karvandi: 24:28

yeah. So on the organic side, the main thing, you know amazon's algorithm is always changing and I think they are integrating some more ai into their algorithm. I've noticed like when you search in the search bar, for example, I've noticed it will start to try to show it'll auto-populate products that are purchased in the past and that sort of thing. It'll try to do that. So I noticed they're doing some new things, so it's always changing. But I think that what still works is making sure that you have your primary keywords in your title and the first bullet point, your primary keywords in your title and the first bullet point. I think those are still weighted the highest. I don't think you need to repeat keywords. I see a lot of sellers do that, where they repeat certain keywords or phrases. I don't think that's necessary. I think it just needs to be in there, that the word itself needs to be in there, and then, yeah, and then making sure.

Kusha Karvandi: 25:09

The most important thing is just going through and scrolling Amazon and compare, hedge your search result of your product to the other search results. How does the image look If all the other images are kind of full width and the product takes up a ton of the space of the pixels of the image, then maybe you should do the same thing, or maybe you should do something slightly different to stand out. So you got to look at that image, because the image affects the click-through rate a ton. Then the title would probably be the second thing in terms of the copy, not just the keywords but the actual copy to catch the person's attention. What are the keywords that need to be in there, that maybe they're not super high ranking keywords but they might help you convert because they help create clarity in your product.

Kusha Karvandi: 25:52

So having those keywords there. And then I would say the other thing would be price point. You know how are you priced and you know I saw somebody made a suggestion I saw a while back that I think is actually a great suggestion which is using clippable coupons with a high percentage discount 30 to 50 percent and the reasoning behind it the theory was that a good chunk of Amazon customers don't remember to actually like clip the coupon. So they yeah. So you get a huge click through rate and conversion, but it doesn't actually impact your margin as much because maybe only half the people actually clip the coupon.

Adam Shaffer: 26:31

Yeah, no, I that that I get for sure that's a good one. And what? What about the actual A-plus content? I mean you would use all the modules, fill it out, if you could get the premium content. Get the premium content. Yeah, the premium is pretty easy to qualify for.

Kusha Karvandi: 26:46

Yeah, it used to be a little bit more difficult to get the premium and then over time they made it pretty easy. I think pretty much anyone can get it. If you have a registered brand, you can get premium A plus. I think you have to have what like five A plus regular A plus submissions and a brand story on all your ASINs and then that's it. And one thing one little hack around that too is that you can just duplicate. Like if you don't have five products and you're like well, how am I going to get five A plus submissions? I only have one product, you can literally just duplicate the single A plus page you have, duplicate it five times and it'll get approved instantly and that will qualify for your five submissions. Then all you need is your brand story, apply it to all your ASINs that it applies to and that's pretty much it. I think every Friday they automatically assess and you'll get it unlocked. But that premium A-plus is a must because I think that makes the brand stand out so much more, especially if you're in a competitive space. I think that's really key, especially having video in there. Video is key because not everyone will see or watch the video in the carousel area. So I think having video in there is really, really key, having a comparison table if you have other products to be able to cross sell and upsell, because not everyone will know that you have other products at different price points potentially. I think that's a big part of it.

Kusha Karvandi: 27:57

The other thing I will mention too is that if you have issues with like hijackers and that sort of thing, one hack I'll mention is that you can enroll in like transparency and in transparency. You just need to have a registered trademark. It basically in any country and I didn't know this because transparency is a, is a, you know, is a global program so you can get a red like in the US if you get a registered trademark. It could take you like a year or two to get a registered trademark, even if you try to like fast track it. It takes a long time, but in Germany you can get a registered trademark in like two weeks. Their system's a little bit different there. You can basically file for it.

Kusha Karvandi: 28:34

I think I got mine like three days. It was registered in like three days in Germany and then what they do in Germany is like it's registered, so you can then use that registration to get Amazon transparency and then protect your brand from hijackers and that sort of thing. And then, I think like a month, within a month or something like that, or two months, they publish it for opposition. So as long as nobody tries to negate your trademark registration there, it basically registers and you're good. So that's one kind of hack. You can't really use that trademark to enforce your brand, like if somebody's infringing on your trademark or something in the US marketplace. You can't use a German trademark to do that, but at the very least it's for brand registry.

Adam Shaffer: 29:10

It's fine right.

Kusha Karvandi: 29:11

Yeah, you can use it at least for transparency.

Adam Shaffer: 29:14

Yeah, we use IP Accelerator in the US to get the brands going. It takes you can, you don't have the trademark. It still takes a while to get the trademark, but you can be up and running on brand registry pretty quick. But going to transparency, you just got me thinking like so we work with some brands that again, so we don't actually make products Like we're not the private label, we're an accelerator. So we'll work with brands and help them sell on Amazon and several of our brands are in the transparency program. But it's different. You know, there's something where there's serial numbers and there's something with this labels. Are you talking about the barcode labels or you're talking about the serial numbers?

Kusha Karvandi: 29:51

Well, it's kind of. But with transparency, what you have to do is it's a serialized system. So what they do is like, like with the regular UPC barcode on your product, upc barcode is the same on all your units. If you send a thousand units to Amazon, that barcode is exactly the same. With uh, with transparency the barcode, it's going to show a number on it. That number is basically your UPC Usually it's what I see and that you that number looks the same. So it might at first glance. You look at it and you're like well, all these barcodes are the same, these transparency barcodes, but it's actually a QR code and the QR code is unique, so it's serialized. So every unit has a different serialized QR code, even though the number below it on that sticker, that transparency sticker, looks the same. So yeah, it's a serialized system that basically every single one is unique.

Kusha Karvandi: 30:38

So when you enroll in transparency, you have to go into the transparency portal and then you have to basically download um, however many codes you need uh for your next order. So if you're going to send, let's say, 10,000 units to FBA, you go into your transparency, you request 10,000 codes and then it will give you two files. It'll give you a CSV and a PDF. You send that to the printing company I use, like Avery in China. You send it to Avery Denison, they'll print it and they'll ship it to your supplier in China, and then that supplier will then put it on all your products, for example, and then they'll send it to FDA.

Adam Shaffer: 31:13

I think I'm a big believer in it. It's just something that you need to you know agree that you're going to you know commit to, because if you're selling in other channels it's not always that easy. But I agree, I love it. You've been helping some of the bad actors on Amazon, so your product is really focused on optimizing advertising, getting the ranking up. But I'm sure you were saying earlier and I cut you off that there are some other features that you're building out. So what are some of the cool new stuff that you're going to add?

Kusha Karvandi: 31:52

Yeah. So I have things like that. Well, just in terms of rankings, if somebody's like oh, you know what, I really want to focus on these keywords, just to rank quickly. I want launching a new brand, I'm launching a new product and I want to get these ranked for these particular keywords as fast as possible. No-transcript.

Kusha Karvandi: 32:26

Want to go after dog leash, which is extremely competitive because a short tail, you know high volume keyword. Maybe the system is going to launch a ton of campaigns around these longer tail keywords that are semantically related. You know best dog leash, dog leash for large dogs, dog leash for small dogs, so forth. So you have a long list of these variety of keywords that contain variations of those words in them and the idea is that it's basically sending signals to Amazon's algorithm that you're relevant for the primary keyword and it tends to work really well. I mean, I've seen you ranking well, you know doing this manually. I've seen ranking well for short tail target keywords without even targeting that keyword directly, like without actually even and I just want to make sure I got it right.

Adam Shaffer: 33:10

So you're saying, by targeting these long tail words, you'll get the short tail?

Kusha Karvandi: 33:14

Exactly, yeah, amazon's finding you relevant for the short tail keyword when you're getting sales through the long tail keywords.

Adam Shaffer: 33:20

Okay, I didn't realize that and so you've probably seen it all. What are some of the biggest mistakes, biggest advertising mistakes people make, of course, when they're not using your software.

Kusha Karvandi: 33:31

Yeah, I would say the most important thing. This is the most important thing by far. Whether you're focusing on rankings or you're focusing on getting immediate visibility through PPC, you got to make sure that your listing is competitive and so in the beginning, PPC is a great place to get your visibility and get traffic, because you could be at the top of page one through PPC from day one without running any rankings campaign, because you're just paying per click your advertising. So in that case you can be a little bit more aggressive. I would try to be aggressive in your pricing or your offer. Maybe you have bonuses or something like that to make your offer more appealing. Or just make sure your creatives are really good. You have really strong creatives video creatives, as seen in badges, whatever it may be to have a lot of social proof to maximize the conversion.

Kusha Karvandi: 34:18

Because in the beginning, the mistakes people make is they try to go after rankings and keywords where they're not competitive enough, Like all the other. Competition at the top of the page has like 10,000 reviews and they have like two reviews. So that's the one piece of advice no one gave me in the beginning that I wish I had known before. I wasted a lot of money on trying to rank is. I remember ranking products in the beginning being like, wow, I'm ranking like top of the page, number one or top five, and then like a few days later I would drop completely off the face of the earth. I'm like what happened? I was ranking like why isn't it working? But I didn't realize that like, just because you rank doesn't mean you're going to stick, even if you're selling the exact same thing as somebody else, Even if it's slightly better than the competition, even if the price point unless the price point is like drastically better, and even then you still have to have a comparable number of reviews.

Kusha Karvandi: 35:04

So I think the thresholds are usually around, like, if somebody has like 20 or 30 reviews, you need probably at least like 10 reviews. You know, to be competitive, If the top competition has, you know, somewhere around 100 to 900, some reviews, you need at least 100 reviews to be competitive. If they have over 1000, you need to have at least 1000 and so forth, because it's really the psychology, Like if someone goes to Amazon, they search a keyword and all the competitors have, let's say, 5000 reviews. You know if you're at like 100 reviews, you're probably not going to take away a lot of market share and it'll be hard to maintain those rankings. You're going to have to be running continual a variety of different campaigns to keep and maintain that rank at that level. So and that may, not be a problem.

Adam Shaffer: 35:49

So, kusha, you brought it up, man, but how do you go get all those great reviews? Because that's not a simple task.

Kusha Karvandi: 35:55

Yeah, I mean. So basically, in the beginning, you really got to leverage as many sources as you can, and TikTok is a great channel. A lot of people are talking about TikTok as being the gold rush, although I am a little concerned around maybe TikTok being banned, and so I wouldn't rely too much on just TikTok. Who knows, don't know if that's going to be there or not.

Adam Shaffer: 36:14

But social media.

Kusha Karvandi: 36:15

Yeah, social media influencers are a great way. In the beginning you have to be careful because I know a lot of sellers are reaching out to influencers directly to get reviews. So I'm sure a lot of those buyer accounts are flagged and you don't want those buyer accounts associated with your seller account if these people are leaving reviews on everyone's products and that sort of thing and it's going to negatively associate with your account. So you want to try to avoid that. What I would recommend is try to go after these micro influencers who aren't really influencers at all, People who have like maybe a hundred friends on TikTok or a hundred followers, you know, maybe under a thousand I would say threshold in terms of followers on like Instagram or TikTok. Those would be a good place to start because those are people who are, like you know, pseudo influencers. They just have mostly friends and family that are following them.

Adam Shaffer: 36:58

So back to the long tail again, right?

Kusha Karvandi: 37:00

Yep, exactly, exactly. You go after those, you get them to buy and you know, and then, um, you know, get them to ask them to leave a review as well. That would be a good place to get that going. Vine can be good too, but I have found that Vine can backfire. If you're, if you're very confident in your product, you know and you have a lot of good, if you have good product packaging and inserts and things that really maximize the customer experience. Because Vine, I feel like, is like 50% of Vine, is around the unboxing experience. Like they're judging you based on the unboxing, I feel like, and if they have a great unboxing, like that's like half the battle. They're like, okay, I love this product, that'll get you like at least four stars right there.

Kusha Karvandi: 37:37

But in general, I found that, like Vine, reviewers generally tend to be more critical than they used to be, and so you know you can get up to 30 reviews initially with Vine, and the two issues are that number one, it could take, you know, god knows how long before you get those 30 reviews.

Kusha Karvandi: 37:51

There's no way to really control how long that will happen, what timeframe. And number two, like you might get all four star reviews and if your competitors are all like four and a half stars or higher, that's not going to really help you competitively. So that can be an issue in itself and sometimes I've seen it backfire, where you get a lot of one star reviews for some reason from Vine, so that can be tough too, and those those reviews are weighted a little bit higher, so it can be hard to overcome that, even if you start getting a lot of organic reviews over time. So I think definitely the influencer route is a good way to get going. And then obviously, the long-term evergreen. You need to have some type of funnel, like you need to have something through your product, your packaging, your inserts that leads them through some type of a funnel in order to be able to interact with the customer and ask them to leave a review. I think that's really the only way long-term.

Adam Shaffer: 38:36

And you talked about it earlier. You got started on Amazon, but did you do Shopify?

Kusha Karvandi: 38:48

I did yeah, I still do Shopify and you know, one brand that might be a Farbans brand was like half Shopify and I mean I like the platform a lot.

Adam Shaffer: 38:52

I mean I like Amazon for the audience it brings you, but I love the freedom of Shopify and, you know, I think maybe your conversion rate will be better on Amazon just because it's Amazon and people are there and people might not know your site. But I do think there's something about having that relationship with the customers.

Kusha Karvandi: 39:09

Yeah, it is, it's way and it's like you know, it's a definitely it's a longer term strategy because it's definitely a learning curve and it's completely different than Amazon, like learning how to build your Shopify. Like, if you think about Amazon, amazon's already kind of laid out the whole page for you. So in terms of the user experience, the customer conversion experience, all of that's already taken care of for you With Shopify. You know, obviously Shopify does some of that, but you have to, like, design it. You have to design your theme. You've got to design the whole page, the creatives and everything. You have to design your theme. You got to design the whole page, the creatives and everything. You got to do all of that. Um.

Kusha Karvandi: 39:41

And then you got to think about fulfillment, like, are you going to use fba to fulfill your shopify orders? Are you going to use, like, ship bob or something like that to fulfill? You have to think about that. You have to think about customer service with fba. Fba is doing mostly customer service and in the rare instance they the customer needs more than they reach out to the seller. But even even with my brands that was doing you know my one brand that was doing like eight figures I would only get like a handful of messages a day through Seller Central. I think Amazon FBA was handling most of the customer service outreach.

Adam Shaffer: 40:10

And Shopify, you're on your own. And again I digress, but I mean I do like Shopify. So, like, circling back to the Kazam platform, like I'm definitely going to try it, I want to, I want to do it. So if, if somebody wants to try, it is there, is there like a X amount of free day trial, or is it? Is there a monthly you can get in and out if you don't like it? And is there a monthly spend that you have to spend in advertising to use it?

Kusha Karvandi: 40:41

Yeah, so basically you know you have every. We have three plans. Every plan it's kind of based on how much you spend on Amazon now in terms of basically like the thresholds for the different plans, but basically our startup plans 197 a month and it's up to $10,000 in monthly ad spend. And then the next one up is $397 a month, that's up to $50,000 a month in ad spend, which is probably I mean, those two are going to cover the majority sellers. And then the third plan, which is $547 a month. That covers up to $200,000 a month in monthly ad spend. And all three plans come with a seven-day trial.

Adam Shaffer: 41:13

So you get a seven-day trial. Do you have to sign up for a year, or can?

Kusha Karvandi: 41:16

you do a month to month. Yeah, and they're all month to month. There's no yearly contract.

Adam Shaffer: 41:27

That's great, Okay, Well, I'd love to start wrapping it up, but I really would love to get some final thoughts for people that are either getting in or on the Amazon platform. You know, maybe some uh, your words of wisdom.

Kusha Karvandi: 41:37

Yeah, I would say the the the one thing for me. I've never done drop shipping or wholesaling. I know that might work for some people. Maybe get, especially with wholesale, if you can get contracts with certain suppliers, certain brands. You know that I think that might be lucrative. It's not something I've ever really been successful with.

Kusha Karvandi: 41:52

Uh, my success has always been in, like I would say, stay in your niche like something you know. You have to stay in your circle of competence. A mentor of mine called it like your success signature you stay in your niche like something you know. You have to stay in your circle of competence. A mentor of mine called it like your success signature. You stay in that realm of like what you know really well. And mine's always been health and fitness and I find that, like, if I were trying to go into like office products or something random like that, I wouldn't be as successful in those niches because I don't have the depth of knowledge that I've garnered through health and fitness. You know I have, like you know, almost two dozen certifications as a trainer, that I've trained over 10,000 one-on-one hours with clients back in the day. So I have a lot of knowledge around where the trends are going with health and fitness, that I can be kind of ahead of the curve, kind of like the Wayne Gretzky of like go where the puck is going to be, not where it is. That's, that's the mindset you have to have is, like, what's an area of your expertise, that you, you have knowledge, that you almost have that insider knowledge that other sellers won't have. Especially the Chinese sellers won't have that depth of knowledge.

Kusha Karvandi: 42:49

Usually they're going to just kind of copy a product, whatever the top seller is in a category. They're going to kind of copy that and undercut them in price, that sort of thing usually. So try to go into it knowing like, okay, can I find a niche? Number one, that I have that intricate knowledge. Number two, I would recommend starting with private label. You know, to keep your costs low, to test the viability.

Kusha Karvandi: 43:10

So you find a supplier, whether it be through Alibaba or a trading company, whatever it may be, and then just launch something with a low MOQ that's comparable to the competition, ideally with something to make it a little bit better. So you're not just competing on price. Make it a little bit better. Add a bonus, multi-pack, whatever it may be, add something to it to make it a little bit better, or maybe a small design element to make it a little bit better, without investing heavily in tooling and molds. Get it going and then, once you've proven it after the first month or two, then you can say you know what? Okay, I'm going to now work with some engineers. You can hire some engineers and get the engineers to create the CAD files for you, which are these kind of manufacturing files, design files, that you can then give to your factory and say hey, are you able to customize this product further? I want to make these changes or I want to make this new version.

Kusha Karvandi: 44:00

What would that cost? To create the mold and the tooling to manufacture this? That would be the next step. And then you'd want to start building some intellectual property around that Like. One thing I would recommend from there on top of that would be to sell the product for a little bit first, before you invest in the intellectual property, unless you're, like certain that it's going to be really valuable. Because I've invested in a lot of things ideas that the products were just kind of so-so or didn't sell very well, and it was kind of too late. I'd already invested so much into molds and tooling and IP, and then I had to just basically phase out the product because the market didn't really care. So it's better to let people vote with their wallets on Amazon. If they buy the product, if they like it, then you know okay, this is the product that I should go get a designer utility patent for it, and so forth.

Adam Shaffer: 44:48

And you think it's not too late for somebody to start up on Amazon today. It's not too busy, not too crowded.

Kusha Karvandi: 44:52

No, no, I think it's a good and a bad thing, because it's definitely much harder than it was, obviously five, 10 years ago. It's definitely much more challenging with more competition. But the good thing is, if you can be patient and you're willing to take the time to learn and look at this as a slow game, it's not going to be overnight. It might take you six to 12 months to get this thing really going and profitable, more or less. So if you look at it from that perspective that hey, this is not the get rich quick scheme then I do think that this is a very viable strategy, because once you're in, then a lot of other people on the other end of it, on the other side, a lot of people are going to give up. And now you're in, you're successful, you're making money, while everyone else is like, oh, amazon's too hard, it doesn't work anymore, I give up.

Kusha Karvandi: 45:46

So it's almost a good thing now, whereas in the past it's like everyone was jumping in because it was so easy, yeah, so so, kusha, how do people contact you and how do they learn more about Kazam? Tell us about ways to get to you. Yeah, so our website is gokazamcom, that's G-O-K-A-Z-A-Mcom, and then my email address. You can email me at info at go kazamcom. Uh, and those you know. Any questions for me will be routed to me and I'm really happy to help really answer anything. Uh, you know that that people have questions about.

Kusha Karvandi: 46:07

I also have ownership in an agency called launch titanscom. Launch titans does it's like a full service agency as well, and one thing we help with is, you know, helping people basically build different funnels, like customer engagement funnels, as well as with engineering. If somebody's like, hey, you know what, how do I take my private label product and then build some concepts and ideas to make it better, and then, once I have that idea, how do I actually make the manufacturing files, the CAD files, the tooling, how do I find the factory? We can help with all that as well.

Adam Shaffer: 46:38

That's awesome. So you're an inspiration to me and to everybody that's listening. So thanks so much for your information. We wish you luck and we're definitely I'm definitely going to start trying your software. So thank you so much for joining us today and you know let's keep on talking because you know there's definitely a lot there, and please come back and join us again.

Kusha Karvandi: 47:01

Awesome. Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 1: 47:04

Thank you for watching another episode of the Planet Amazon podcast, where we talk all things Amazon. If you want to learn about how to accelerate your sales on Amazon, visit Phelps United's website at phelpsunitedcom.