Maximizing Profits on Amazon: Hymie Zebede's Blueprint from $3M to $24M in Sales

Unlock the full potential of your Amazon business with expert insights from Hymie Zebede, who skyrocketed a brand's revenues from $3 million to an astonishing $24 million. In this episode of Planet Amazon, we're pulling back the curtain on the Amazon marketplace, providing you with the insider strategies you need to succeed. From dissecting the Amazon algorithm to optimizing your product listings, Hymie's experience in scaling brands is a goldmine for any seller looking to boost their online presence and sales.

Navigating the Amazon landscape requires more than just a good product; it demands a mastery of the platform's ever-changing rules and an agile approach to marketing. We dive into the art of acquiring and leveraging product reviews, the ins and outs of PPC advertising, and why a vigilant eye on sales data and keywords is essential for long-term success. Whether you're a seasoned seller or new to the game, the strategies discussed here are practical, battle-tested, and ready to be implemented.

We also explore the power of driving external traffic to your Amazon listings, the intricacies of bidding on competitors' brand names, and the importance of staying ahead of Amazon's stock-level regulations.  So gear up for a journey to the top of Amazon's search rankings and get ready to turn those clicks into conversions with the wisdom from this episode.

You can learn more about Hymie here: https://www.hymiezebede.com/ and you can connect with him here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hymiezebede/

The Planet Amazon podcast, brought to you by Phelps United, addresses all things Amazon and other eCommerce marketplaces. In each episode, we talk with Brands, Agencies, and Sellers about Amazon news, new features, policies, brand policies, logistics, marketing, issues, and challenges, among other topics.

To watch all Planet Amazon Podcast episodes, visit our YouTube channel.
To learn more about Phelps United, visit our website.

Transcript

Announcement: 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: 0:17

Hello everybody and welcome to Planet Amazon, where we talk about all things Amazon. I'm Adam Schafer and today we have a great guest. I want to welcome to the podcast, Hymie Zebede. Hey Adam, hey Hymie Zebede. Who is Hymie Zabidi, by the way? I'm sure everybody's asking. Well, Hymie has 12 years of experience creating and scaling brands on Amazon. com and has a proven track record of creating, launching individual listings that sell over $1 million a year. He has a top level understanding of the art and science of the Amazon. com algorithm, which I definitely want to know more about, and one of Hymie's big recent wins is taking a company from $3 million a year in sales to over $24 million a year in sales. So I definitely want to hear about that. Welcome to Planet Amazon, . Can you tell the audience a bit more about yourself and how you got into this crazy game?

Hymie Zebede: 1:16

Sure, adam, thank you for having me here. I'm very excited. I started selling on Amazon 12 years ago and originally I just threw up a bunch of things to see what would work the best, and a few things really took off. I started bringing in containers of it and at that time I had a middleman bringing the stuff in for me and I was living off of it for years. I bought a house with it. I made a lot of money from it, thank God.

Hymie Zebede: 1:46

And then at one point I tried to go direct to import it myself from China and I had no idea how to do any of that, how to negotiate with the suppliers and quality control and all those things. So I brought in one container completely garbage, it was all. It was all yeah. And then I brought in a second container right after that, also worthless. I lost a lot of money bringing in my own things, so I was a little bit fed up with that.

Hymie Zebede: 2:19

I sold my business, I sold my brand and and I said you know what, I know how to build great successful listings on Amazon. I don't know anything else about negotiating with suppliers and all that other side of the business. Let me go to people that know about importing goods, that probably have a lot more money and a lot more inventory than me and let me show them how to really scale on Amazon. And I would go up to them and tell them listen, look at my sales last year. Look at your sales. I'm a nobody and I'm beating you up. Look at my sales. It's so much more than you. Let's see what I could do for you and built up some successful listings for people. Word spread oh, Hymie made this listing, Hymie made that. And then I just started full-time managing accounts, scaling businesses on Amazon.

Adam Shaffer: 3:11

It's funny. I thought you were going to say you cracked the code on bringing stuff in from Asia, and it's actually not. You got fed up with it and you focused on what you're really good at, so that's good to hear. Not everybody can say that and you really saw your niche was helping people sell on Amazon not necessarily. You know building product and bringing it in from overseas, so that's awesome.

Hymie Zebede: 3:34

Yeah, I think it's a whole different business. You know, like you got to really focus on something that you do well and do it the best that you can hey.

Adam Shaffer: 3:43

so you got to tell me, because I haven't ever cracked the code on it. But what is the art and science of the amazon. com algorithm? Isn't it always changing? How do you figure this thing out, man?

Hymie Zebede: 3:57

So it is always changing. It changed a lot since when I first started. It used to be much easier you just throw something up there and it would basically sell on its own, even if the pictures are garbage or it was missing all the right keywords. Nowadays you really need to step up your game. I'm in all different types of masterminds and watching constantly YouTubes and podcasts and looking up online all the different changes that Amazon makes. A lot of times they'll make changes, very frequently. They'll make changes and they don't tell anybody about it because they don't like to share their algorithm, but really just staying in the business and seeing what's going on and you really have to do everything the best that you can.

Hymie Zebede: 4:43

You need amazing images. You need to have all the keywords everywhere the title, the bullets, keywords, backend. You need to make sure that you're looking at your conversion rate, your click-through rate. There's so many things that need to be. It used to be. You could do maybe two out of the five things. Now you need to do every single one of those five things perfectly if you really want to build it. You know, yeah, no that makes sense.

Adam Shaffer: 5:05

I mean, what's funny is what you're saying is true. I mean Amazon. If you're not in it every day and you're not part of the communities and listening and learning and reading Amazon will take off and take away from you. You'll get lost in the abyss. You need to be connected to a community because it changes so often and there's so many different parts of Amazon that you have to be really good at.

Adam Shaffer: 5:31

And I talk to brands all the time they go oh, we can just put the products up and we'll be fine. It's like you have no idea what it's like to try and deal and work through the Amazon marketplace, be able to take your products from something that's maybe small to something that's big, or protecting your brand, even on Amazon. So I think it's complicated and people don't realize how complicated it really is. And so, which leads me to the what was this big win? Because it sounds like you took somebody from, and that's a great story and inspiration for everybody that listens to the show. What was the? You don't have to tell us the exact brand, but what was this one where you took it from a million to, or 3 million to, 24 million?

Hymie Zebede: 6:26

and then I'm saying I'm not trying to brag I do have a lot of stories where people had very big increases in sales just because you have to just check off every box that you can and amazon will reward you. It's just an algorithm. So, basically, this company, they had listings, um, you know, we ranked them nicely, they were selling, they were selling very well and it was clothing and they were planning on letting certain sizes and or colors go out of stock. And I said, listen, this is clothing. It's not like you have one size and you can just let it sell out and all the other sizes will just continue.

Hymie Zebede: 7:02

Like normal, amazon looks at every child's variation. So if you search a word whatever the word is men's underwear, men's joggers you search that word and on Amazon search results they're showing, even though it looks like they're showing the full parent in the back end or on the URL. You'll see one child ASIN is showing. It's usually that child ASIN is the one that's holding that keyword, so that child ASIN is showing up on page one. If you don't have that child ASIN, it doesn't mean that another size or color is just going to start showing up on page one Once you sell out of that color slash size, you might be on page four. So it's, like, so important to make sure that you don't sell out, especially of the MVPs, of the children that are ranked for the best keywords that are bringing in the majority of the sales.

Hymie Zebede: 7:57

So I told these guys, we cannot sell out, we must bring it in. And they were very nervous to bring it in because we had to ship it in through air, they would be losing some money. And I was like guys, this listing is going to sell hundreds and hundreds of pieces, 400 or 500 units a day. You can't just let it go out of stock for three months right now. That'll kill everything. So we aired it in, lost some money in the beginning, but the listing just took off since we didn't run out, and that happened over a few different listings and it was just.

Hymie Zebede: 8:38

You know, it's like one of the most important things is just staying in stock and doing everything right, because if you sell out of stock or, like you said before, when people just think they'll just throw things up on Amazon and it'll sell, if you do things wrong from the beginning, it doesn't mean you automatically have a second chance. Yeah, we'll figure it out later. Yeah, you could obviously do the best you can to get back on track, but you don't know what you missed out on by messing up the honeymoon period or by messing up that momentum. I like to think of it as if a guy's running in a race and he trips. Yeah, he can get back up and continue running, but he just hurt himself by doing that, yeah, lost a lot of steps.

Adam Shaffer: 9:21

I mean that's great. So obviously this brand is happy with with you and you killed it for them. Yeah, okay, so you know it's funny. I get a lot of questions and I keep kind of track of the questions I get that are the most popular. And since you're the Amazon guru when it comes to advertising and building brands on Amazon, I'm going to ask you a few and kind of I'd love to get your perspective on these things. And the biggest, most important question I think I get from everybody and I'm not going to ask you the should I be on Amazon or not? But it's how the heck do I get good reviews Like what's the magic? Is there a silver bullet or is it just a lot of great things?

Hymie Zebede: 10:06

So I wanted to start with you should never do anything against the rules on Amazon, and when I say that I mean obviously, like buying reviews, incentivized reviews. You should never mess around with that, because Amazon does not care who you are. They will suspend you and it doesn't matter if you're doing. I know a seller who is doing over $100 million a year when he got suspended and they don't care because the next guy will just move right up and take that spot. So never do anything.

Hymie Zebede: 10:36

Black hat Reviews is like the number one thing Amazon is looking for. First of all, I have no problem getting reviews. My whole review strategy is if you're doing it right, which means you're brand registered, I will enroll it in Vine. And when I enroll it in Vine, I'll also enroll it in Vine at a very low price so that I'll make sure I'm getting as many good reviews as possible, because even though the Vine reviewer is getting it for free, he's still leaving the review based on, you know, for the person who's shopping. So if they see something like, wow, it's an amazing deal, it's definitely worth the money, they're going to give you all five stars, but if you have one, just pain, just one guy who's just so annoying, you know, oh, it's okay.

Hymie Zebede: 11:25

A four-star review like doesn't cut it, like that's. You don't want four-star reviews, you want all five-star reviews, maybe one four. Okay, then if you get a negative review on Vine, you're finished. You just killed your whole listing. You're going to need a dozen good reviews to fix that.

Hymie Zebede: 11:40

I like to enroll it in Vine at a low price, get those 30 reviews and then I like to keep it at a low price afterwards and advertise it so that I'm getting a lot, a lot of sales and then I'm requesting reviews on every single order and there's a lot of things that go. You know there's a lot of benefits to doing that because you're also getting, you know, ranked for all the keywords, because Amazon is seeing all those conversions. But yeah, like you shouldn't have any problem getting reviews if you're enrolled in Vine at a low price and then you continue keeping it at that price afterwards, advertising, and then Amazon lets you request a review, have the Vine when you click the order number and there's extensions. Also Request reviews on every single order.

Adam Shaffer: 12:24

And so obviously getting a five is everything. I mean, how important is reviews to sales?

Hymie Zebede: 12:32

Reviews are important. They are not, so they're not. You don't need thousands of reviews. You know sometimes you do, it depends on the product. But a lot of people think you need like thousands and thousands of reviews to you know, to compete with every competitor, but you don't like I have a lot of listings that are doing better than my competition and I have 200 reviews and they have 3,000 reviews. The most important thing is just having a good average. You need to have a four and a half star showing and if you get to a four star, you definitely see a significant difference in sales and this helps the algorithm right.

Adam Shaffer: 13:12

Amazon puts you up higher with this right.

Hymie Zebede: 13:17

It definitely helps the algorithm. They see a product that people love. They want to show you more, and then also things like return rates. All those things help the algorithm. If they see things that are highly returned, all the time it hurts. That's why they started putting that badge also, and then it's also hurting conversion rates now that they see that frequently returned item.

Adam Shaffer: 13:40

Yeah, no, that's no good, and so that's the worst. So I was thinking and I haven't talked to you about this before but do you do anything with influencers at all to try and get reviews, or is that not what you do yet?

Hymie Zebede: 13:55

So I not, not really for reviews. No, because it's a little bit depending. I'd be asking them to leave you a review that you're going to send them a free product. It could be a little bit risky. I do send out, I do send out products to influencers to make YouTube videos and TikTok videos and things like that. Uh, but not to directly buy on Amazon from me and to and to leave a review. Just because you know, I'm not saying it's dangerous, but I, I, like I said before I, you know I knew a seller who was doing he was a top seller doing a hundred million a year and he got suspended. So, like I try to keep very, very careful.

Adam Shaffer: 14:37

No, that's good advice. Okay, good, Well, thank you for that. And then another one that comes up all the time is you know, I had this listing and it was doing great, and then things just started to slow down. And you know, do you see, good listings go bad? Is that what happens?

Hymie Zebede: 15:00

I see listings decline all the time. But there's definitely a reason for that, originally when, when I first started selling one of my one of my listings, I saw that it started getting a little bit slow. I'm like you know what. It's been a slow few weeks, I guess it's just normal. Then it just kept getting worse and worse. I'm like what's going on?

Hymie Zebede: 15:19

Then I was speaking to my mentor at the time. He was like Hymie, if you're losing sales unless it's a seasonal type of product if you're losing sales, that means that somebody else is taking your sales. So basically, I was ranked for a keyword organically and another guy. I went down, and another guy went up and took my spot and now he's getting all the traffic. And that was before I was tracking keywords. Now I recommend everybody track their organic keywords and see what's going on. If you're losing sales, it's either you lost organic placement or there was a keyword that you were sponsoring or something that you were sponsoring and you were getting a lot of sales from it and for some reason you're not spending as much on it, or your maybe your cost per clicks.

Adam Shaffer: 16:09

But on the listing and the organic part of it. Is it that they need to revamp their listing to get the word more words in there, to work on their SEO? What? What's going on in the listing that's having them lose the organic?

Hymie Zebede: 16:23

Sometimes it could be that they need to. They need to freshen up their listing. Maybe there's new words or different trending phrases that they should, because the search volumes change on different words and different long tail phrases. But most of the time what I see is that they're just not tracking their keywords. And there was a keyword they thought okay, I'm getting a lot of sales, let me just run ads and it'll continue. But they don't realize that something. Maybe their ads cannibalize their organic placement or whatever it is. Maybe just the competitor is converting better and getting more sales organically for that keyword.

Hymie Zebede: 16:58

Somebody took their spot and Amazon's not adding another spot for them. Amazon, if somebody goes up, somebody needs to go down. A lot of times it's just they're not looking at the data. They're not looking at like where are my sales coming? And usually it's. You know, if you're looking at five to 10 keywords max, you should be able to maintain your business Like these are the five, six, seven keywords that I'm in the top 10 for I need to make sure that I'm. I stay in the top 10.

Hymie Zebede: 17:47

Yeah, no, that makes, that makes sense, and one of the big issues these days is it seems to me, and it seems to most, that if you're not spending money on advertising on Amazon, you're going to lose share. But what's your philosophy on advertising and PPC on Amazon versus organic? So when launching a product, you definitely need ads. Obviously there's some exceptions to the rule where you could just kill the price and drive outside traffic, but ads help so much during the honeymoon period and during a launch so that you get shown for so many different keywords and on other people's listings. Down the road you might be able to lower your ads.

Hymie Zebede: 18:16

On one of my listings, one of my biggest competitors basically shut off his ads about six months ago and he's still killing it. He's still doing unbelievable, but what he's doing is he's doing every single lightning deal and seven-day deal available, which is a great strategy, and also he lowered his price and added a coupon code. So there has to be something that you're doing to drive the sales either lightning deals, 7-day deals, more competitive pricing, something to push it. I don't think shutting off the ads where you have your organic rank, because sometimes the ads will also catabolize your sales and all of a sudden it'll hurt the organic rank. So I think finding a sweet spot in the middle PPC is important, but you don't want to rely completely on it where, all of a sudden, your ads just shut off. You run out of budget, that's it. Now your sales are gone.

Adam Shaffer: 19:28

But start heavy with a new product and then moderate over time. You want to get that cost per acquisition down, I guess, over time. But don't stop, don't stop. But you need to always be doing something with regard to PPC on Amazon, I would think 100%, especially in the beginning.

Hymie Zebede: 19:49

A lot of people they'll say, oh, let me just spend very little in the beginning, the first few months, and they're killing the whole honeymoon period and they're spending nothing in the beginning and down the road. Now Amazon sees that it's just. You know what I mean. It's so important in the beginning for Amazon to see that this is a strong listing. That's why a lot of people will just put it at a low price in the beginning, blast it with ads and every single person that's seeing their ad is like, wow, this is an amazing price, I'm going to buy it. And Amazon's seeing an amazing conversion rate and they just want to show you now for everything.

Adam Shaffer: 20:23

So what's Hymie's secret sauce for PPC advertising for success? Is it more like it's the long tail or is it focusing on a few words, like when you go into an account, what's your thoughts, how do you attack it?

Hymie Zebede: 20:37

So there's really no set rule. I do both long tail, I definitely do long tail, and I also do just short. Main keyword it depends on. It either has to be making us money or improving the rank. So I'll look at every search term that we're advertising on and I'll see is this profitable for us? Are we making money off this? If we're not making money, it could still be very useful. If, of course, you have to be tracking your organic keywords and seeing. You know what? We're getting a lot of sales now from this keyword because he's advertising it and now we see it improving. Last week it was in the 20th spot. This week it's in the 10th spot. That that's value. That means it's worth it to lose money on the edge because now you're, you're ranking it organically. But if you're just spending on something and you're not making money and you're not even ranking the ranks, rank's not improving. What's the long-term strategy with that? It doesn't seem like there's a plan there. You just spend to make sales that you're losing on completely.

Adam Shaffer: 21:41

Do you use software to manage your PPC or are you doing it all manually?

Hymie Zebede: 21:46

I do use a little bit of software. I have a custom API where I change some bids and things like that. Most of it's manual, though A lot of times I like to bulk create things, bulk create a lot of listings. You know, single keyword campaigns, yeah, but I'll use some softwares and I'll use some, uh google sheets that I built out, that have like automation tools to just put everything together nicely. I don't rely I don't recommend anyone uh rely completely on software, especially on software. That's just. Oh, you know what? I'm going to get you a low, the lowest ACOS, and because then they're it'll either slow down the sales or they're not looking at the organic rank, like it needs a manual. It needs a real life person with a brain to look at and to see like, okay, how is this campaign affecting everything else? And also, a lot of times the listing will change.

Hymie Zebede: 22:48

What happens if you were at a four and a half star and then you got a few bad reviews and now you went to a four star? Your ad strategy might totally be different now. It doesn't mean it's the same thing as it was before. Let's say, you change your price, you adjust your price. Now you need to adjust your ads Everything. You have to adjust your ads based on stock also. Am I going to sell out, Am I not? You have to adjust your ads based on stock also. Am I gonna sell out, am I not? Like there's so many different things I don't recommend anyone.

Adam Shaffer: 23:14

So manual is, uh, the old, the old-fashioned way. I mean, I talked to a lot of folks and they they used to spend a lot of time using software. Now they went back to manual. So, um, they like, like you said, they used, they used the software a little bit to help them organize, but they're going through every campaign manually, day by day. So it seems like a winning strategy to me. Just a lot of work.

Hymie Zebede: 23:37

Definitely a lot of work, but you can't rely only on ads. We're not at that point where you need to use your brain a little bit and see what's going on.

Adam Shaffer: 23:48

What's your thoughts on off Amazon advertising? I mean, I've been seeing off Amazon Google becoming more important, or am I just being sold a bill of goods by the new guys that are out there selling this stuff?

Hymie Zebede: 24:02

So with Google, I play around with Google a little bit. I like it because when you send traffic to listings, even if there's no sales, it'll help you rank a little bit, just because Amazon sees that external traffic. But the truth is, if I have a limited ad budget, I would prefer to spend it on amazon, where the person is ready to buy something. A lot of times on google the person's just looking for information and things like that, but, like on amazon, that's where they're buying it. So I want to. Unless you have unlimited budget, I like to put most of my money on Amazon.

Adam Shaffer: 24:49

Yeah, I mean. So Amazon likes off Amazon traffic, so they help with the ranking, but you're getting higher conversion rates on Amazon with Amazon advertising. That makes sense, except, I think people are trying everything at this point to try and get more sales on Amazon, but they do give you a discount. From what I understand, if you're doing it through your brand registry, you're the brand owner, I believe you get 10% off.

Hymie Zebede: 25:15

That can add up also a lot.

Adam Shaffer: 25:17

Yeah, no, it's pretty pretty helpful.

Hymie Zebede: 25:20

I had a person make a Tik TOK video of one of my listings and it's like an unbelievable video and I'm spending on that a lot now and it's doing amazing.

Adam Shaffer: 25:31

Really.

Hymie Zebede: 25:32

But also it's because of the content. It's a great video that somebody made.

Adam Shaffer: 25:38

Big one for me. That's great. I could use a couple of those and then going back, just staying with the advertising for a second. So when I think about, first of all, I hate that you have to spend money, but you have to spend money in advertising. And then there's some of the listings with the keywords that you're losing money on. But if you have like a subscribe and save product, I mean, to me it really comes down to what's going to be the repeat buy. You know not that you own all these customers Amazon kind of owns them but you could see what the repeat is on your products and that would help me and make me want to advertise more and more. I think I don't know what's your thoughts on subscribe and save and advertising on that stuff.

Hymie Zebede: 26:20

You know what? I completely didn't mention that Great call. If you're selling an item that people repurchase, that you could set up a subscribe and save. That's another factor, another reason why you would want to lose money in the beginning on the ads to get that customer, and now that's it. Now you have a customer who's repeatedly purchasing. So that's yeah, I love subscribe and save.

Adam Shaffer: 26:40

So do I. I mean it's an annuity. I mean to me, if I was going to go try and find a new product to sell on Amazon, unless I was selling gold bars or something. I think it has to be something that people buy over and over again.

Hymie Zebede: 26:55

I subscribe and save to all my products that are subscribable.

Adam Shaffer: 27:00

No, it's great. Yeah, no, we do too. No, so pretty interesting, and I think it's a powerful feature that Amazon has and people should think about that in their advertising strategy. So we talked about advertising and organic, but is there any way? I mean, do you know any of these brands that are able to rank in the top five, that aren't spending money or they could do it all organically, or is that just crap?

Hymie Zebede: 27:27

That aren't spending any money, even through yeah, even through, like Google ads and things like that. It's, it's, it's hard right, Very, very hard. You know you definitely could get ranked, definitely could get ranked right, Very, very hard. You definitely could get ranked, Definitely could get ranked. But either you're going to have to spend on ads or I'm in the middle of the page organically. I'm sure if I cut my price in half, even if I'm losing money now, all the people that see me in the middle of the page are going to start to buy me and then I'll start moving up and up and up. I'm saying you're taking money from one place to another.

Adam Shaffer: 28:12

It's about finding You're spending it anyway. Yeah, yeah, no, that makes sense. And then there's always the should I buy my competitors brand names? Like you know, that happens on google, happens on amazon, and if somebody's looking for you know, I'm going to say I sell a lot of technology products and I remember talking to the Epson people and they have this receipt printer and it's really popular, really well known in the real world.

Adam Shaffer: 28:39

But you go on Amazon and you punch in Epson receipt printer and it's really popular, really well known in the real world. But you go on Amazon and you punch in Epson receipt printer and you'll see 10 other receipt printers before you get to theirs, from brands you've never heard of in your life. And so should you be buying the Epson brand? Should Epson be buying their own brand? What would your thoughts be? And I just throw Epson out because I remember this situation where they're, you know, outside of Amazon, they're the number one in that area, but inside Amazon there's 10 other guys.

Hymie Zebede: 29:11

Basically like arbitrage, like buying.

Adam Shaffer: 29:13

They're buying the Epson brand. So you punch in Epson label printer or receipt printer and brands you've never heard of just show up and Epson's somewhere at the bottom. So they're buying the brand name Epson. When they buy the keywords, they're buying Epson receipt printer, Epson printer, Epson this.

Hymie Zebede: 29:31

Are you saying four keywords like advertising on the keywords yeah, oh, I do that. Yeah, yeah, I do that all the time so.

Adam Shaffer: 29:39

So buying a competitor's brand name on ppc is a is something you should try or want to try yeah, if you're comparable, especially if you're, if you're a comparable item and you're cheaper, for sure.

Hymie Zebede: 29:51

A lot of times I'll even I'm saying it should be done with big brands and also small brands. You know, it's very important to if a lot of times you'll look at, you'll look at the competitors that are selling well and let's say they have four stars and you have four and a half star, you should definitely be advertising on their listing. Or if you see a guy who's selling, you know selling an item and you have a very similar item and you're a couple of dollars cheaper, for sure, advertise on their listing.

Adam Shaffer: 30:20

Okay, I mean. So that's good. I mean, sometimes I see, when I buy somebody else's brand, it's just the cost to acquire is so high, because I think they're really looking for that. And I get lucky once in a while. But I think you're right, if I'm cheaper, if I have better reviews, maybe I'm going to get a bigger share. So I think that's pretty good advice.

Hymie Zebede: 30:41

It's worth a test. Worth a test. If you don't try it out, you won't know.

Adam Shaffer: 30:48

So give us Hymie's top few reasons or ways to increase your conversion rate. I have something that I'm selling on Amazon, but I really think that I got great traffic but I'm just not converting enough. What are some of your tips and tricks? What do we do?

Hymie Zebede: 31:06

One of the biggest things is making sure that your image. I know everyone says images are so important. They really are so important. The customer they can't touch your product. They have to see something. Every image is important. First of all, you need an amazing main image to improve the click-through rate so that when people see you in the search results they're going to click into your listing. And then every other image has to be like so vivid and 3D I just close up to where they can see. You know if you're selling clothing, they can see the quality they can like, feel it, basically through the image where they don't have any questions. And then also the image.

Hymie Zebede: 31:48

A lot of people go back to clothing. For example, if your size chart, if you don't have a size chart, you know it's over and if you have a size chart, that's a little bit confusing. People don't really want to waste their time and start buying things that they're not sure of. Like you want to remove any doubt. And then if you're selling, you know, let's say, you're selling car accessories like you should be putting in fit. If it's made for a certain thing, you should be fits this model, this model, this model like you should be convincing them and removing any sort of doubt from the buyer when they're on your page. If they're on your page it's worth so much money you don't want to get them off your page now. So if it's waterproof, make sure you have it waterproof in big letters in the beginning of the bullet, in big letters on the image, whatever it is.

Hymie Zebede: 32:38

You need to make sure that any question they have about your listing is answered. And then to help with the conversion rate, I like playing around with coupons also, playing around with prices. Like, let's say I'll add a 5% off clip coupon or I'll adjust the price or sale price. I'll look at the conversion rate for like a week straight and see how is that affecting my listing. And also the same thing with the image. Let's say I'm changing an image, I'm changing a main image or I'm changing a secondary image how is it affecting my listing? But the most important thing is to not do everything at the same time, because if you're not do everything at the same time, because if you're changing your price at the same time as you're changing your image, you don't know what's going on. You don't know what's improving anything or what's hurting it.

Adam Shaffer: 33:27

So those are two very big things, do you?

Hymie Zebede: 33:36

do the photography for your clients, or are they doing it and they're giving you the content? So we do all the secondary images, uh, lifestyle size chart, storefront, evc, things like that. Um, they send us a main image, a couple main images, and then we just have our graphic designers who make up, you know, beautiful images from that do you ever do renderings, or is it like do you do 3d renderings and they work out?

Adam Shaffer: 33:58

We do.

Hymie Zebede: 33:59

Yes, it depends on the product, but a lot of times there'll be great.

Adam Shaffer: 34:04

We started, we started doing that and sometimes they're better than the photography. Yeah, you get that shine to them and all that you know. It just looks, it pops, sure Cool, so you know, sure, so you know, is video that important or not?

Hymie Zebede: 34:24

I mean, I, I love when there's a video, but I just hate when it doesn't tell me anything exactly if it's, if it's a product that you're not sure of how to use, or or all the benefits videos are so important. You know what I mean. Like you need to have a video showing the difference between you and your competitor, what your product has like a certain feature that other people don't have, or how to. You know how easily you know this thing opens up. Like you have to show how, how it is to use. Um, if it's something like you're selling socks, I don't know if you need a video. It could be. It can't hurt having a video. It depends on the person's budget, but some products need videos. Like you need a video for this product, some products don't.

Adam Shaffer: 35:09

Have you been doing any of the AB testing that they do on Amazon? They let you do new.

Hymie Zebede: 35:15

Most of the AB testing that I do, I do it on third party websites just because I get quicker results and quicker answers. So you are testing content.

Adam Shaffer: 35:28

Testing for sure. Yeah, okay, that's great, that's great, okay. And then going back to Amazon, do they really care about the content when they're looking at your ranking? We talked about the reviews and we know they're important, but is the content important to where you show up in rankings?

Hymie Zebede: 35:47

Explain content. What do you mean by content?

Adam Shaffer: 35:49

The images, the video, the words, all that Is that part of the algorithm Is that part of the algorithm.

Hymie Zebede: 35:57

First of all, the amount of images you have are part of the algorithm. Whether the image is zoomable, part of the algorithm.

Adam Shaffer: 36:06

Oh really, White background.

Hymie Zebede: 36:07

Whether it's zoomable. Yeah, of course they're looking at everything, the alt text in the back of the images, like I have a little extension on my Chrome browser. I can look at any competitor and see what keywords they're putting in the back of the images. Like I have a little extension on my Chrome browser I can look at, like any competitor and see, like what keywords they're putting in the back of their images, supposed to put Spanish misspellings, things like that. And yeah, of course they're looking at all the words that you have there. You know long tail, short tail. They want to see. That's how the algorithm works.

Hymie Zebede: 36:39

A lot of thought. Certain things are hurt the listings. Like I've seen html in the, in the descriptions, hurt the listings. Um, people putting a lot of emojis I've seen that hurt listings and it doesn't. It's not like a rule like if you put emojis your listing is gonna get. But I've seen the bots catch on to some listings that have emojis and HTML all bold in the beginning and you know sometimes the bots will just penalize it and just you know it'll hurt the rankings and then when you fix that you'll see all of a sudden it starts indexing again.

Adam Shaffer: 37:15

Amazing. So let's talk about just SEO in general. I know that you used to spend and you still keywords. They're ranked for in the top 10 spots.

Hymie Zebede: 37:44

So I'll use a tool like Helium 10 and I'll just put in their ASINs and I'll come up with thousands of words that they're in the top 10 for, and then I'll sort by search volume and then, of course, the highest search volume words that they're ranked very well for, and then, of course, the highest search volume words that they're ranked very well for, those will go into my title. The title is the most important and then after that I'll put the main keywords in the title. You have to really craft something nice, because you have to try to put the main keyword in the title, but then you can try to turn it into a long tail. The beginning of the long tail is the main keyword. So, really playing around with all different versions of the title and then the bullets and putting everything in the right order.

Hymie Zebede: 38:28

What I'm trying to accomplish is I'm trying to. Obviously I don't want it to be too spammy. I want there to be readability and that the buyer understands what they're getting and answers any questions. But I really want amazon's algorithm to favor me over the competition and to see okay, this guy has this word over here in the beginning of the title. This must be the main thing, or he has this over here. He doesn't have these key. If you're missing keywords, why are they going to want to show you?

Adam Shaffer: 38:56

so Makes sense.

Hymie Zebede: 38:58

Yeah, my main thing is really just with the organic.

Adam Shaffer: 39:01

So I don't want to date this podcast too much, but we have, although we're kind of a little bit past the date to set up your promos. We have Prime Day coming up in July and any words of wisdom for folks that are going to be trying to increase their sales during this huge day or days be trying to increase their sales during this huge day or days.

Hymie Zebede: 39:25

Okay, so we are past the date for setting up Prime Day deals, lightning deals and the best deals that was May 3rd but you can still set up Prime exclusive Prime Day deals. So if you go to Prime exclusive discounts and then you click create, it'll say is this a Prime Day deal? It's a little checkbox and you just click that. I recommend everybody does that. If a lot of people in the past were not eligible for the other type of Prime Day deals, we did those. The sales are unbelievable. So definitely everyone should set that up. If you change your mind later down the road, for whatever reason, you can cancel it. And there's no fee. There's no fee for that deal. There's no, you know, it's free to run. So I recommend everyone do that. And then also, you got to start getting your goods in. I don't know the exact date Sometime in June I think it's maybe mid-June where your goods have to be sent to Amazon. So we need to send it. I don't know when this podcast is going to be published hopefully before then.

Adam Shaffer: 40:27

But everyone needs to start sending their goods in to Amazon right away. Yeah, it sounds like Amazon also relaxed their new overstock understock rules. Is that?

Hymie Zebede: 40:35

am I got that right. What do you mean by that?

Adam Shaffer: 40:37

Because they have these new rules where they're going to charge you if you have too much and they're going to charge you if you have too little. It's kind of the Goldilocks program. You got to have it just right and I think that they just recently relaxed that it's not going to hit yet.

Hymie Zebede: 40:51

I think it's not until later in the year. Yeah, I don't know the exact dates. On that, I wasn't really too upset about that. People are going to think I'm crazy, but I think it's so important for everyone to have a good amount of stock, not overstocked and not understocked. If you're understocked, you're hurting your listing because Amazon's not going to want to show you because, first of all, they're going to see, let's say, you have three weeks worth of stock or two weeks worth of stock. You're not going to be in all the fulfillment centers.

Hymie Zebede: 41:20

So somebody in California is going to try to buy it and it's going to say two day shipping. Some guy in New York is going to try to buy it. It's going to say seven day shipping or 10 day shipping, like, like I think every. I was a little bit excited when I said wow, you know what, and this will get everyone a little bit on their feet to make sure that we have enough stock in amazon. And then also, people leave aging inventory in amazon for so long they think it's like a, just like a storage facility. No, like, you have aging inventory in amazon, you need to lower your prices a little bit. You need to.

Hymie Zebede: 41:51

You can't just let it sit there right yeah, but yes, I don't know the exact dates of how, what dates they pushed it off to. There definitely was an update that I'm not sure of. That. I'm not sure of the exact dates.

Adam Shaffer: 42:04

Well, definitely, I think a lot of people were nervous about it because it is hard for people to manage it and I get being understocked. But I think things like Prime Day people want to jam inventory up there and I think people were a little nervous about it. So hopefully that quelled their fears and people are going to ship up there. So one of my favorite questions is simply like there's 2 million plus 3P sellers on Amazon today and that's a huge number. But I mean there's a small group that make up the you know kind of the tip of the spear but say there's 2 million people on Amazon selling stuff. Is it too late for somebody to break in and sell on Amazon and be successful, or do you think there's always room?

Hymie Zebede: 42:52

It's definitely not too late. I want to put it out there that it's not just an easy passive income type of business where everyone says, throw your stuff up on Amazon, it's so easy, you'll get rich. It's not like that. It's a regular, it's a real business. It's a real business.

Hymie Zebede: 43:09

Yep, most businesses fail. You have to do everything right. But I'll tell you something about Amazon I've never seen a way where somebody could so quickly get their product shown to the world and build up a brand. It's the easiest time that it's ever been to really build up a strong brand. I'm saying because of Amazon, so I love the Amazon model. It's not easy.

Hymie Zebede: 43:37

You have to do everything right. You have to do all the right things. You can't cheapen out by not wanting to run ads. You can't cheapen out by saying you know what? I can't afford to keep my price a little bit lower in the beginning to show Amazon good conversion rates. Or cheapen out with getting crappy photography. With getting crappy photography, you need to do the right things. But if you do the right things, I really believe you can make so much money on Amazon and, like you said, so many sellers keep signing up and starting to sell on Amazon, but also so many sellers, are losing and closing their businesses every year. It's like a regular business. It's not too late at year. It's like a regular business. It's not too late at all.

Adam Shaffer: 44:21

That's great, that's inspiring to me for sure, and I'm sure everybody else that's listening. So thanks for that. And then we're going to start to wrap it up here. Any other final words of wisdom for the audience and also a way that people could reach out to you if they need your help.

Hymie Zebede: 44:41

You can reach out to me on LinkedIn. Just search my name, Hymie Zabede. You can shoot me over a message. Connect with me. We'd love to chat. I just want to let everyone know that it's what we just spoke about a second ago. It's so possible to build something strong on Amazon. Amazon shares so much information with you on where the sales are coming from, on the conversion rates of your competition. They share so much data with you that if you really look at it, or if you have somebody on your team who could look at everything closely and do the right things, you could build a very strong business so quickly. And yeah, I wish everyone you know everyone will build up strong and really focus and, you know, scale their Amazon businesses. And if you need help, if you need any help, please reach out.

Adam Shaffer: 45:28

Yeah, of course. Okay, awesome man. Well, thank you so much. Really good stuff today. We can go on forever and talk about this. I love this topic and obviously you do too, but time to say goodbye. So thanks for joining us today and I hope to be back with you soon.

Hymie Zebede: 45:43

Thank you for having me, adam, it's great.

Announcement: 45:45

Take care everyone, 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 ph.