#640 – Flip App – A Hot New Marketplace You Aren’t Selling On

Join us as we welcome Carrie Miller, Principal Brand Evangelist at Helium 10, back to the show, where she shares her exciting journey navigating the e-commerce landscape. Carrie has been thriving on a lesser-known platform called Flip, selling an impressive 30 units daily. She talks about her strategic approaches, including leveraging product inserts to collect customer emails, which has significantly boosted her Shopify sales. Additionally, Carrie shares insights into her ongoing ventures on Amazon with two family brands and her exploration of TikTok Shop, while addressing the challenges she faced with Walmart listings and her plans for improvement.

Explore the world of e-commerce with us as we discuss the rising trend of social media platforms becoming major shopping hubs. We talk about a popular new app that’s capturing the attention of sellers and influencers alike. The app allows anyone to earn commissions by creating product-related videos, providing exposure and sales despite daily unpredictability. The conversation touches on the potential shift of influencers to this platform due to TikTok bans, and the exciting opportunities this presents for sellers seeking to diversify their strategies.

Listen in as we analyze the complexities of manufacturing and logistics within e-commerce, focusing on Carrie’s decision to move to a closer 3PL in Reno for enhanced inventory flexibility. We discuss the challenges of transitioning into a Flip influencer and the potential for earning extra income through creative content. The conversation also highlights Carrie’s experience with manufacturing decisions, from Turkey to future plans in the U.S., and the strategic use of Helium 10 tools to optimize product listings and maintain a competitive edge. Finally, we touch on health hacks with the powerful benefits of black seed oil and the latest features of Helium 10 that aid sellers in maximizing their marketplace success.

In episode 640 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Carrie discuss:

• 00:00 – New Marketplace Success and Health Hacks
• 02:28 – Warehouse Logistics Flexibility and Accessibility
• 05:16 – Introduction to Flip Platform for Sellers
• 06:41 – E-Commerce Success Strategies
• 08:58 – Social Media Platform Migration and Influencers
• 14:58 – Manufacturing and E-Commerce Strategy Analysis
• 15:47 – Making Money Through Social Media Platforms
• 22:14 – Strategies for Keyword Analysis and Advertising
• 26:07 – Navigating Amazon-Selling Challenges and Strategies
• 29:35 – Carrie’s Health Hacks
• 30:23 – Favorite Helium 10 Features Discussion

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

We’ve got Carrie back on the show to talk about a new marketplace she’s selling in that you’ve probably never heard of, but she’s selling 30 units a day on there, and we’re even going to learn about some of her health hacks that helped her to not get sick for three years. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

Bradley Sutton:

Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that’s a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies or serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. We’ve got a local resident serious seller here who’s going to talk about a brand new platform, Carrie Miller. Welcome back to the show.

Carrie Miller:

Hi, thanks so much. I’m excited to be here.

Bradley Sutton:

I’m wearing my Helium 10 basketball jersey. Carrie used to be a varsity basketball. No, you were a basketball player and then you coached volleyball, but did you coach basketball also?

Carrie Miller:

No.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Well, she has worn basketball uniforms.

Carrie Miller:

Yes, I played basketball. In high school. I played basketball, and then they had me coaching volleyball when I was a teacher, and I definitely don’t know how to play volleyball, so I don’t know how to.

Bradley Sutton:

Of course, that makes all the sense in the world. You play one sport and go ahead and coach something that you never. There’s our educational system, but anyways, that’s a side topic there. Today, I had you back because I wanted to talk about something. You’ve been trying to talk to me about this for a long time, but I just been so busy I haven’t had time to look at it. And then, all of a sudden, news articles started talking about this platform. But it’s a platform that you’re selling on, and so we’re going to get into it in a little bit. But before we get into it, you know it’s been a number of months, more than half a year, since we’ve had you on before. How did you end your family’s brands on Amazon? Were you up on all brands last year for 2024?

Carrie Miller:

Yes, we were up last year. It wasn’t as much as previous years.

Bradley Sutton:

How many brands is that, by the way?

Carrie Miller:

Two.

Bradley Sutton:

Two brands, okay, so up on both.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, it was kind of some months were up more year over year and some were down. This year we had. January was pretty strong 15% year over year growth. So that’s pretty good, and we’re trending 20% to 30% in February so far.

Bradley Sutton:

Now what are the brands? Last year you were looking into selling? Is that still in progress? You’re still looking, or do you have something close or what?

Carrie Miller:

The deal ended up not happening, so it’s kind of at the last minute. But yeah, we’re still interested in that. But we’ll see.

Bradley Sutton:

Now you have a warehouse in California or Nevada? Because you moved to Nevada last year or year before.

Carrie Miller:

So we’ve always used main freight as our third party logistics, and then we also had a warehouse where my dad would also ship out some orders there as well, because he had to do kind of custom things there and ship them out. But we actually got rid of that and now it’s just the garage and so we have a like storage unit for stuff if we need to go get something, but then also for our 3PL. We’re moving main freight to a 3PL in Reno, so it’ll only be like 30 minutes from our house.

Bradley Sutton:

So is the reason for that because you want to be able to just like go down the street and go there to take care of stuff? You know, because you know some people like they live outside of the country. Obviously that’s not an option. If 3PL in California is the same thing as a 3PL in Florida, it’s still way far away from them. But does that give you like extra flexibility with your inventory?

Carrie Miller:

It’s just nice to be able to go down and see if there’s an issue like the one in Moreno Valley. We lived in Temecula, so it’s just easier if there’s any issues we can just drive down there and they can’t ignore our emails or anything.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, all right. So now Amazon was working. Well, Walmart, were you up or down?

Carrie Miller:

Kind of stagnant there. Not too much growth there on Walmart, so that’s kind of been challenging.

Bradley Sutton:

How about TikTok shop? I know you started a TikTok shop, but I hadn’t really, like you know, focused much on it. How’s that been doing?

Carrie Miller:

I haven’t done too much on TikTok shop, so I’ve got to kind of focus on that too, and that’s one of my goals this year. So you’ll start to see some more from me on that. So, yeah, haven’t gotten too much. I mean we’ll get a few orders here and there, but nothing’s huge.

Bradley Sutton:

How about Shopify?

Carrie Miller:

Shopify has been up we actually we’re continuing to grow there. We’ve been collecting emails so we in our product inserts we give away a product for free if they sign up for it and we get their mailing address and their email address. So we’re actually planning on doing a mailer at some point. But we also have those email addresses so that we can send them emails and kind of remind them of our products and then any launches we have we can send those out to them too.

Bradley Sutton:

Now this other platform that we’re talking about is called Flip, Flip app. I believe now I had never even heard of it until you told it to me and, of course, later I started seeing the news and stuff. Who put this on your radar? How did you or your dad find out about?

Carrie Miller:

This my dad has signed up for something called RangeMe. Have you heard of RangeMe?

Bradley Sutton:

I have not.

Carrie Miller:

So RangeMe is a platform where you can go to have retailers find you and your products. So if you’re interested in retail opportunities, there’s ways that you can connect with big retailers. But in retail opportunities, there’s ways that you can connect with big retailers but a lot of the orders we’ll get are from small shops all around the country. But RangeMe is just a place where you can go to get exposure for your brand, for buyers and things like that. And so we actually have been contacted by quite a few platforms like Shein, Flip, I think, Temu. So they’re kind of looking for sellers on that platform too. So that’s kind of how we figured out what Flip was and that’s where we got started.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, when was this that you started on the platform?

Carrie Miller:

I think it was in August.

Bradley Sutton:

August, okay, so not that, not that long ago. So, what like from a app point of view, what is Flip? Is it social media? Is it strictly a marketplace? What is it like Temu? What is it?

Carrie Miller:

It is like social media, but it seems like it’s more like a selling shopping kind of platform. So people are going there to kind of find products and buy products, more so than social media. But it looks like TikTok. So if you go on there and you’re familiar with TikTok, it pretty much has the same look. What’s really different is they, as you’re scrolling, you get kind of money to get free products. So I’m not as a as a consumer, I don’t know exactly how that works, but I think your first three products you can get kind of like really good deals or for free. Um, based on your scrolling and things like that, I’m not 100% sure how it works.

Bradley Sutton:

It sounds like the stuff that used to be like the 90s and 2000s, where you browse the internet and you can get money by using these like little plugins and stuff Interesting. All right. Now I see you have your computer or your computer, your phone, connected to here. Why don’t you go ahead and explain what we’re looking at here?

Carrie Miller:

So this is just kind of one of the. I just did a search of a brand that’s pretty popular, Anua. but I don’t really, I actually don’t really see too many of the products. But Anua is the,  it’s kind of a Korean skincare brand that’s gone viral on TikTok. I wanted to kind of look at it, but basically what happens is you can see if-

Bradley Sutton:

It does look like TikTok.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, it does. So these videos basically are kind of like sales videos, so like this one right here looks like an Anua one, and so they’re going to be able to talk about the product, and you can see it in the top corner.

Bradley Sutton:

So those are like influencers?

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, they don’t even have to be influencers, so anyone can get these products and do videos and earn commission. So there’s no like you don’t have to have a certain amount of followers or anything like that. But here’s another like a newest skincare, and so they’ve got it kind of linked in there. You could see that my scrolling number it’s $36 and 13 cents. I still haven’t figured out what to do with that but that’s from just scrolling and they give you money. And then you can get free products too because there’s brands that are giving away free products on there and you can do reviews on here. And when you do the reviews you can get commission.

Bradley Sutton:

So now is all content product related, unlike to, you know, TikTok is mainly, you know, like dancing and just like you know info and stuff and then every now and then there’s like a TikTok shop, you know kind of like product thing. But on this app it looks like is it a hundred percent about the products?

Carrie Miller:

So if you look there’s, there’s other videos too.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, okay. So I’ve got yeah, this one has nothing to do with the product.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, so there’s some you know and then you can see my amount goes up as we.

Bradley Sutton:

So as we’ve been scrolling you, you’ve been making some money on there. That is insane.

Carrie Miller:

So I’m still not sure how they fund that or how that works, but I think it has to do with your, you know, getting your free products to kind of share a video. And they, and basically you know you pretty much have to do a video or else you won’t get, you know, the free products in the future.

Bradley Sutton:

You just made 25 cents in the last minute doing nothing.

Carrie Miller:

That’s the next thing is I gotta figure out how to spend it.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, I mean like some of this stuff is kind of disturbing looking. What in the world? I don’t even know I don’t even know what the heck this is.

Carrie Miller:

I’ve actually seen this one on somewhere else.

Bradley Sutton:

It’s impossible. Somebody taking off their face.

Carrie Miller:

It’s, yeah, it’s her makeup. What she looks like underneath. But yeah, so it is like a social media platform, but a lot of TikTok influencers went here right away after the TikTok ban for 12 hours they just hopped straight over to Flip. So that is. You know something to consider there. But yeah, you can just.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, so that’s the consumer side, I guess. So now, as a seller you just like, did you have to, one by one, make your listings? Did it have a migration to Shopify or TikTok or anything?

Carrie Miller:

It was a migration from Shopify, and so they actually kind of helped us do a lot of that. And I have not run ads, but I did talk to somebody about running ads on there, so that’s another option. You can kind of put your own videos out there and I can look up my brand and I can see there’s I think there’s like 370 videos on our products, which is really great cause you get free. Now, a lot of it isn’t that great. People are just doing videos and they’re getting free products and stuff. But you know, it’s a cool way to kind of get your products out there because you know, especially if a good product that people want to reorder, then they’re going to probably keep ordering your product.

Bradley Sutton:

So now fast forward this before we get into the logistics of how this worked. Just like nowadays, a normal day, you’re actually doing like 30, 40 plus units a day.

Carrie Miller:

It was like 20 to 30. It’s kind of slowed down a little bit. It kind of spiked with the TikTok shop situation. But yeah, it can go anywhere from like 3 to 30. It’s not very consistent.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. All over the place, okay so 30 a day, that’s pretty good. And then without, you’re not doing, you’re not paying for advertising right now?

Carrie Miller:

No.

Bradley Sutton:

So then, how did you build it up? You first migrated your listings from Shopify to this app, and then how did you get? Like, how did you get people to start making videos? Is it like TikTok shop, where you give out. You have this portal where you look for influencers and offer them a free product or what?

Carrie Miller:

Ao that’s the challenge is you can’t really choose your influencers. It’s called on the house and so anybody is allowed to do a review on your product. So that’s why, like, you, don’t have to be an influencer to start making commissions. If you’re, you know, start doing reviews so you know, that’s why some of our videos are really pretty good and some of them are terrible.

Bradley Sutton:

Anybody can opt in and you have to send them a free unit.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah so then, what do you like? I mean, I’m assuming there’s limits, where you say how many you’re willing to give out or something like that.

Carrie Miller:

You can put limits on there. Yeah, for each.

Bradley Sutton:

How many? What did you like to date, like how much have you given out?

Carrie Miller:

We’ve given out quite a few. I think it was like in the 300 range.

Bradley Sutton:

300. Okay, in five, six months you gave about 300 but you’ve had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of orders way, way more than that. Okay, interesting. What’s the like pricing structure? Are you pricing it exactly the same as Amazon and Walmart?

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, same exact price.

Bradley Sutton:

And then what’s their? How are you fulfilling the orders?

Carrie Miller:

Okay, so we have it connected through our Shopify.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, and then is the Shopify going to MCF or it’s going to 3PL.

Carrie Miller:

So our 3PL does all that. Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Are you able to get data on them, since it’s coming through Shopify, like their address and stuff, so you can do like marketing later?

Carrie Miller:

Not really that I’ve seen. I need to go back and look more into the dashboard. There’s a lot going on there, but you can see like you can see your sales and you can see those free videos if you’ve gotten any sales from any of those videos too, and how many people watched a certain amount. There’s a lot of stuff in the dashboard that I’m still trying to explore.

Bradley Sutton:

And how much, what kind of like commission do they take?

Carrie Miller:

They take 25 percent.

Bradley Sutton:

25 percent, that’s even more than Amazon.

Carrie Miller:

It’s a lot. Yeah, so it’s 25 and I think they maybe that’s how they potentially pay the influencers out of that.

Bradley Sutton:

Ah, okay, people, so the influencers you just have to give them aha. So the influencer you give them the free product, but you’re not unlike TikTok shop and Amazon. You’re not or unlike TikTok shop, I should say you’re not giving 5% or 10% to the influencer.

Carrie Miller:

Right.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, so okay, that makes it sounds a lot better, that that makes it kind of like equal to like Amazon and TikTok.Okay, that makes, that makes me feel a lot better, interesting, interesting, and so you’re, you’re like not even focused on this really, and you were able to get it up to like an average of, you know, 10, 15, 20 orders a day even.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, we weren’t doing any focus on it at all. So,  I do want to start running ads. They said you know that we have a good potential to. It wasn’t like huge numbers that they were saying, but you know they’re like, yeah, you can, you know, maybe in the next few months get an extra. You know, sell 30,000 in sales a month and then maybe in you know 180 days, 90,000 a month. So it was like a kind of a slower build.

Bradley Sutton:

Man, I have to, you know, look into getting there. What’s the signup process? Like was it? You know? Like, when I was trying to get onto Temu, oh my God, we had to like take selfies and write messages and hold up pictures to prove who we were, and do it like 17 different times. Is it just kind of like straightforward, like TikTok shop, where it’s just like show us your incorporation and data. Does it ask social security? Like well, do you remember what it was like?

Carrie Miller:

I don’t, I didn’t do it, my dad did it, and it seemed like it was pretty straightforward.

Bradley Sutton:

Do you know if they’re doing any, if they’re open to foreigners or just US-based?

Carrie Miller:

That is a good question. I actually don’t know the answer to that.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Well, hey guys, if you’re out there and it, you know, like you know, Carrie is tying her Shopify to her 3PL, but remember, you know, like you could have your Shopify also tied to your MCF and then I would assume, theoretically it would be just a you could have a pull from your MCF, your FBA inventory, but it could be a platform worth exploring. I’ll go ahead and, with Carrie’s help, yeah, Carrie, I’m going to assign you to please get some of our coffin shelves or something up on there and let’s see how it goes, because that’s an interesting concept, like the article that we talked about in the Weekly Buzz a couple of weeks ago was something like they’re earmarking $100 million in equity for the creators. So I don’t know what that means exactly, but it’s like they got this fund where you get equity in the company or added bonus if you’re making videos, and so it’s definitely coming up in the news more.

Bradley Sutton:

And as people are worried, maybe about the future of TikTok shop, who knows, maybe now there’s something to look into. Okay, so there we go, guys. We just learned about it. Just when you thought you knew about all the marketplaces you should be on, we learned about a hot new one there.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, and it is a good opportunity if anyone wants to get into influencing and just try it out, because you can get these products for free.

Bradley Sutton:

That’s right. On the flip side, are you an influencer on that platform?

Carrie Miller:

I actually was thinking about just trying out to see what it’s like, cause I think you get their first three products, you get like a very big discount. So I was like oh, I got to. I want to look for like a really good product that I get a good discount on. Like I really, if I can find one of those led masks and get a really good discount on those, I want to do that Like something I really want, want to buy and then do a cool review on it.

Bradley Sutton:

There you go. Okay, so that’s another way. Helium 10 obviously has a lot of new tools for Amazon influencers out there. It’s a great way for those who are looking to get into private label or something and not have to invest, and you just want to build up some capital. Well, who knows, maybe being a flip influencer might also be a way. I’m curious do I actually have to get a product through the system in order to make a video, like, for example, on Amazon? You don’t have to like Amazon, like maybe this bottle I bought from Walmart but if it’s on Amazon, as an Amazon influencer I can just go and make a video about it, even though I didn’t buy it from Amazon. But you’re saying, for Flip, you actually have to buy it through the, yeah, the platform.

Carrie Miller:

I remember a few months too, I was looking at some videos and people were saying how much they made. I remember one guy said he made $7,000 in one month on Flip. So the numbers that I saw were like okay, here are a few thousand there. It wasn’t the same numbers as TikTok shop, but it was still I mean $7,000, pretty good extra in your pocket. But yeah, so I think that you know right now if you can get on there and start, you know, building up and you know start creating some videos. You have a good chance.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, absolutely. All right. So there you go, guys. Look out for future content from us and we’ll show you the results of getting Project X up on the Flip app. And, in the meantime, if anybody else is selling out there, let me know in the comments below. Like, how are you guys doing on it or are you going to start? Let me know. I’d be curious to watch your journey on there. Now, another project we’re going to put you on you’ve got TikTok shop coming up. I mean, in the past you know you were strictly Walmart here at Helium not strictly Walmart, but that was like your specialty. But you know Walmart, you know like. You know, like many people are in the same boat as you. Their sales aren’t growing, so they’re looking to diversify and other platforms and so been wanting you to focus on other things and so TikTok shop you’re going to get more into. But another project I want to take you back to your roots.

Bradley Sutton:

Like before you were even in the SAS space. You were like a consultant for Amazon, for Amazon sellers. Now, obviously, the best practices and things in 2016 of listing is different. I mean, it was probably different in 2018 and 2019, but it’s definitely different. In 2025, especially now, some sellers are thinking a little bit more about AI. I’m still hesitant. I’m not changing anything as far as AI goes, just because what everybody says is the best practices for Rufus, I’ve been teaching those best practices. It’s the same thing as if there wasn’t AI. You should never just keyword stuff you’re listing, but just in general. You’re obviously launching new products on Amazon still, even though you’re not a consultant for listing building. What are you doing differently, if anything, lately? You know, like for your last product launch, if you launch any this year or last year as opposed to previous years, like, like. Has your strategy morphed at all?

Carrie Miller:

I actually haven’t launched a new product and we didn’t launch a new one last year, and that’s something my dad and I were talking about-

Bradley Sutton:

Wow, so you were able to grow your sales without even launching a new product.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, I actually have a new product that’s being manufactured in Turkey and it’ll be here in the next few months. I think it’s my favorite one personally.

Bradley Sutton:

That you’ve ever launched.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, okay, so.

Carrie Miller:

I’m pretty excited about it and, yeah, it’s just really high quality. And I visited the factory already. When I went last, was it last August. No, the August before last August.

Bradley Sutton:

I thought you were going to manufacture in Turkey like a long time ago, but then it’s like you ran into problems or it never actually happened or-

Carrie Miller:

It’s more expensive to come from there and just like getting it, the logistics of getting it, you know, to the warehouse you have to kind of go to the east coast and then truck it across the country. But you know, with tariffs and things happening, it’s you know, something that-

Bradley Sutton:

are you manufacturing in China? Is that where you’re currently getting stuff from?

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, yeah so this but this new product is going to be in Turkey and then we’re going to ship it and then we also have plans. We’re actually exploring manufacturing in the US as well. That’s just going to take a little while to find the right, because we still have to get the raw materials from China. That’s what people don’t realize is that pretty much 90% of the raw materials are made in China. So we still have to get the raw materials and then we’re going to hopefully manufacture in the US. Some of them. Not all the factories can do the same things that some of these factories like in Turkey and China can do, unfortunately.

Bradley Sutton:

What was the motivation behind looking into Turkey? Was it strictly tariffs? Is it quality? Is it professionalism? You weren’t happy with what was going on at your old factory. What started that and what has made you now pull the trigger and say and say, hey, yeah, we’re going to go with this new product in Turkey instead of our factory in China.

Carrie Miller:

I think it’s like a quality control thing, because you know we do have an inspector kind of watching as things are being packaged, but still sometimes things aren’t, you know, up to par in our opinion. And so with Turkey, just the samples we even have, it’s just really high quality and I like it, but again the cost is much higher. So that’s something you have to consider.

Bradley Sutton:

The cost is higher, but then you save a little bit on the terrace. But even with that it’s still higher due to the higher cost of manufacturing and then the logistics to get it from east coast. So, oh, it’s because you’re shipping a lot of it to your warehouse, not like directly to Amazon.

Carrie Miller:

Right.

Bradley Sutton:

That makes sense.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, interesting, interesting.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, that’s the thing, and so I think the port would be New Jersey, and then we would have to truck it all the way over Instead of like the LA port where we’re using. You know, we usually go in through LA and then it’s just like a few hours. So well actually Moreno Valley was only an hour so I was like, yeah-

Bradley Sutton:

That was super, that was super easy, it was. I’ve shipped to that place many times. I still want to try and figure out how to become an Amazon carrier. Like I am for a TikTok shop. You know, like I, my son just took five pallets at TikTok shop directly to their dock last week, and we’re doing that a lot.

Bradley Sutton:

So I just got to figure out how can I do that with Amazon? Like I know how to become a carrier, but you can’t choose always where you’re going to send your product, like you know. Like, so that’s what I’m worried about. Okay, I go through all this trouble to become a carrier, but then it’s like yeah, yeah, sure, west coast, yeah, sure, send it to Oakland. What about, just in general? Like you said, you didn’t launch any products last year. What are you and your dad doing as far as, like, making sure you’re pretty relevant? Like, obviously you’re using Helium 10, you’re tracking keywords and stuff. Are you doing stuff based on what you see, like changing your listings at all, or like looking for new trends, or like, literally, the listing you had on December 31st across the board was the same listings you had on January 1st of this year.

Carrie Miller:

I have pretty much the same listings. I am going to be editing my photos soon, just to kind of add some more. So yeah, they’re pretty much the same. This is same kind of sales pitches. Just kind of moving around keywords and stuff.

Bradley Sutton:

Your sales are moving forward. You know there’s not much reason to change, but you’re not like adding any keyword, like some new trend that comes up or anything.

Carrie Miller:

I do. Yeah, like there were some keyword groups that I found on Helium 10. And that’s kind of people always want to know like the shortcut to finding these things. But sometimes I just kind of look through them and find trends and like one was a sizing trend and I was like, oh, I can see if these are searched exactly and there’s lots of searches for them. So I did some of that.

Bradley Sutton:

So then that became. What did you do with that information?

Carrie Miller:

Wrote it into the listing and also advertising.

Bradley Sutton:

Ah, got it.

Carrie Miller:

Then there was also something I’ve talked about in the past which I noticed my competitor, one of my main competitors, was advertising. When I did the sorting for sponsored ads, they were basically targeting mostly smaller brand names, and so I did launch a video ad a while back and that one did super well. So you can see sometimes your competitors, like if you’re looking at the keywords when you download them, or even just looking in a Helium 10, cause you can sort, you know where they’re kind of, you know at doing their advertising, you Helium 10, because you can sort where they’re kind of doing their advertising. You can just sort, you can kind of look through the actual words and you can see what the trends are. That’s kind of one of my strategies is I kind of look and see. I’m like what am I seeing over and over and over again, and those are the kinds of things I saw.

Bradley Sutton:

How much of your advertising budget is going off Amazon, because I know you’ve said you you’ve done some Google ads and stuff like that. Like, is that just very small drop in the bucket or are you still doing Google ads or only doing Amazon?

Carrie Miller:

Google ads are to Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

So the Google ads are sending traffic to Amazon, not to Shopify. What was your thought process there on why you’re doing you know cause the argument can be made both ways. I’m not saying like I probably would send it to Amazon itself, and the reason is I want to, you know, drive more conversions and build up my Amazon, you know, reviews and stuff like that. But then somebody else might come along and say, well, I want to go Shopify with a lot you know and make, you know, more profit because, and then be able to keep the customer’s information, you know. So what made you choose?

Carrie Miller:

We were just doing it because, you know it, Amazon kind of rewards outside traffic, so we wanted to, you know, see if we could rank for things and the ads actually have done well, so we just kept going. It’s a small budget, though it’s not huge.

Bradley Sutton:

Are you doing that like attribution link, where your google ads like give you like a kickback if you? Actually get a sale, yeah, ah okay, are you tracking that to actually like Amazon is paying you out?

Carrie Miller:

Oh, I mean, I don’t, I don’t know about that, I don’t know about that part I can my dad does all that kind of stuff, so I could ask him.

Bradley Sutton:

Interesting. Okay, yeah, I forgot about that. There’s another word for it. It’s not attribution or it’s kind of like attribution, but there’s another word for it in Amazon that is just escaping me at this time.

Carrie Miller:

I thought it was attribution.

Bradley Sutton:

Maybe it was attribution. No, brand referral bonus. That’s the word I’m looking for, yeah, but they are like attribution links and what about just off Amazon branding like do you, you know, you have social media, you know, are you doing Reddit, Facebook groups? Anything like that?

Carrie Miller:

I do have social media. It’s not very lively. I haven’t posted it in a while. One of our brands we do post a lot because it’s more of like a sports and outdoor brand, so we do post on that and we have like basically some guys that post for us and use the product and stuff like that. But that is definitely something. I mean, it’s kind of crazy like all the things I could do if I had more time in the day, but yeah, there’s a lot of things I could definitely. Even with that, we’re still growing on Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

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Bradley Sutton:

All right, now. Last year, when you were on the podcast, you know you talked about some crazy thing where somebody actually stole your disbursement and it costs you tons and tons of money. But there was another thing that happened to you where didn’t like your listings get broken up or suspended or something happened.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, we kept getting them taken down and it was basically because our brand name has a word that’s kind of forbidden but it’s allowed because it’s in our brand name. But they basically, yeah, they kept taking them down and then we accidentally pushed a wrong button and our stuff kind of got removed for a long time. And then e-commerce Chris had to kind of come in and help us to get those listings up again. But then they, we had to like completely delete our content, like our A plus content, and not just like, oh hey, take it down, you know, you can kind of save it in the back end, like we had to completely delete it out. Also, make sure, I had to redo the images to make sure there was no like lingering of a certain word without the full brand name in it in the photo metadata, and so it was kind of a nightmare, to be honest

Bradley Sutton:

Wow, but you got it, you got all. Was there something you could have done to help avoid that? Like you know, for the bank account stealing thing, like you know, adding extra layers of you know two-step protection and other stuff, you know maybe, but what about that situation you’re in? I mean, it was, it was in your brand name, but was there something else that you could have done in retrospect, do you think?

Carrie Miller:

I mean, there were some places where it was like the word was by itself, like metadata type thing, so maybe just like really checking everything, but for the most part it was kind of just a challenge. You know, a challenge that we have to go through.

Bradley Sutton:

And still with that, still we’re able to increase the sales and everything. So you’re able to get, like maybe your keyword ranks kind of like back right away, even though you were out of stock for a while. Okay, yeah, I’ve noticed that too, that Amazon has really been pretty good with that, even if you go out of stock. Lastly, like going back to Walmart. Like Walmart, you know it is rapidly evolving, like advertising and things like that. Are you doing anything differently lately, you know, as opposed to two years ago, as far as Walmart, in your advertising or in your listing optimization or anything that you can talk about?

Carrie Miller:

The challenge with Walmart is they haven’t really changed a whole lot, and but I will say I have been talking to some sellers and I used to say stay away from auto ads, auto campaigns, because I felt like when I first did my first auto campaigns they were just ridiculous, like the words that were coming in there were not even remotely related to my listing, and so I was frustrated because they were spending my money on completely unrelated keywords. But it sounds like it’s gotten better over time. And so the auto campaigns when you’re launching your product on Walmart, it sounds like they’re a good way to kind of get launched is to start with those auto campaigns to do some kind of keyword research know, keyword research that way too on Walmart, and kind of learning, and you can adjust the bids on those auto campaigns and you can also do brand term targeting. There’s an option to kind of target other brands on there.

Carrie Miller:

So I do know some people who have done pretty well on Walmart but then some people who are just like, oh, on Walmart but then some people who are just like, oh I do two or three sales a day, and how do I get this up? And so I think Walmart’s working on ways to get that up, but it’s just, it’s been a struggle for a lot of people and so hopefully you know we’re working on some stuff with helium 10 to try to get some tools out there to help people get some good product ideas for Walmart and validation and stuff like that.

Bradley Sutton:

Cool. Before we get into, like your favorite strategy or Helium 10 tool that I usually ask. You’re known at our company for being like the queen of, like home remedies and like health hacks and stuff. So what is one like? If you were to pick out of all the stuff you do which you do a lot of different things what would you say is the one like the number one thing, or remedy or supplement or something that people can be taking that you feel is a big time health hack for you?

Carrie Miller:

I think it’s still black seed oil. Black seed oil is, they say, it cures everything but death and it even can kill cancer cells. It helps just like keep you from getting sick. Like I’ve been in places where people are just like coughing on me and like I didn’t get sick for three years. I did get sick around Thanksgiving. I wasn’t taking it as consistently as I should have and other things. I was in a stressful time. So you know, your emotions are also tightly connected to your health. So there is that aspect that nothing can really help on that.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Of all the new tools or new features that Helium 10 has come out with you know the last six months or so do you have a favorite one?

Carrie Miller:

I mean my favorite has always been the historical trend tool. You can go back in time, you can see where any ASIN was ranked in the organic or sponsored, and then you can also see you know search volumes. So you can kind of get ahead of the competition that way. But there’s also now within historical trend is the three month comparison. So if you’re like, okay, my sales are down, what is going on? Why is it from month to month that something is going on, you can actually see if you’ve lost you know keyword traction, and so you can go into the historical trend tool and compare months. So if you, if you are, you know, super getting a ton of traction in December, but then in January you’re not, you can go and you can actually compare and see exactly what keywords you’re showing up for in December that you weren’t in January and you can figure out what’s going on and where the hole is. I absolutely think that’s gold. I mean, that’s something that, yeah, it’s just so easy to find those, those holes that way. But then I also really like the listing builder and how you can see where your competitors are placing their most important keywords. That’s, I think, diamond only, but I think that that is a huge benefit.

Carrie Miller:

I mean, I was optimizing listings with a very basic tool back in the day and it was just like, basically, I would put the keywords in the word bank. Sometimes I would de-duplicate them too. I would de-duplicate them in Frankenstein and then carry them over and make sure everything was written in phrase form for the most important ones and then also those kind of individual keywords, the root words, all written into the listing. But now there’s just so much more you can do. We have like a listing quality score that you came up with a formula for that, and so you can compare yourself to your competitors, you can see where you’ve actually put your keywords in the placement and you can easily see kind of an overview of how well you did that way. So I mean, those two, I think, are my favorite. I obviously love all the tools and I think everyone should be using them, but those are my favorite.

Bradley Sutton:

Yep, I like them too. That Cerebro historical thing was something I pushed for years because, like nobody had ever done it. But I was like we’ve got to be, like we’ve got the data we should be able to do it. And they even, you know, exceeded my expectations, because now we have that comparison, one where you can say, hey, month one, month two, month three, show me where, you know, in month one it wasn’t ranked at all, you know, or like, or vice versa. So it was tons of capabilities there. All right. Well, Carrie, you left us a lot of homework to do on the health side and also on the different marketplace side and listing side and everything. Let’s connect back in a few months and let’s see how the Project X Flip shop is doing. Thanks a lot, Carrie.

Carrie Miller:

Sounds good.

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