#613 – Streamlined Logistics and AI for Amazon Sellers

Learn new strategies for e-commerce success with Norm Farrar, the Beard Guy, who makes an unprecedented sixth appearance on the Serious Sellers Podcast. Gain insights into the art of slashing logistics costs and leveraging AI to transform your business. Norm reveals his latest ventures in supercharging his logistics company, Honu Worldwide, alongside Afolabi Oyerokun, to offer expanded services like kitting, fulfillment, and custom bottling across North America.

Explore the evolving landscape of Amazon logistics, from the strategic advantages of Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD) to the critical importance of using correct HTS codes. Our discussion highlights the cost-saving potential of third-party logistics (3PL) and introduces the Tariff Terminator tool, a game-changer for ensuring compliance and avoiding unnecessary expenses. This episode is packed with strategies that underscore the importance of understanding your numbers for optimal profitability.

Discover innovative e-commerce marketing tactics with AI tools designed to streamline content creation and boost social media engagement. Norm shares his journey into Amazon influencer marketing, revealing how automation and outsourcing can maximize your earnings potential. Plus, get a sneak peek into a new Helium 10 Chrome extension feature that offers influencers a competitive edge together with new modules for Amazon influencers inside Freedom Ticket. With laughter and learning along the way, this episode promises to propel your Amazon business to new heights.

In episode 613 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Norm discuss:

• 00:00 – Unique Strategies for E-Commerce Sellers
• 02:38 – Expansion and Diversification Norm’s Logistic Company
• 08:10 – Amazon Seller Strategy and Fulfillment Options
• 08:35 – Maximizing E-Commerce Profitability Through Logistics
• 14:47 – Maximizing Savings Through Package Optimization
• 15:47 – Maximizing E-Commerce Marketing Strategies
• 22:28 – Utilizing Tools for Online Engagement
• 27:22 – Amazon Influencer Marketing Strategies
• 31:13 – New Helium 10 Chrome Extension Features For Influencers
• 35:28 – Enhancing E-Commerce Logistics for Growth

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today we’ve got back on the show for a record-setting sixth episode, the Beard Guy Norm for a talk on a wide variety of subjects, including ways to save thousands of dollars on logistics, unique AI tools and even being an Amazon influencer. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That’s a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And I’m not sure if this is a record, but Norm is back here for the fifth time. I think maybe only one or two people we’ve had five times because you know we have guests on one per once per year and the show’s only been around for five years. So you know, by definition, it’s not like somebody could have been here on here 10 times, but I was looking at my notes from Mel and actually there was one time where we had such a long episode that I split it into two. So actually this is kind of like your sixth episode Now that I know for sure is a record, because I don’t think I’ve given anybody else two episodes, so you are officially the guest with the most appearances all time on the Serious Sellers Podcast. 

Norm:

Wow, now that is an honor. 

Bradley Sutton:

There we go. And also, I see, speaking of honors, you’ve got the Billion Dollar Dream 100 plaque. I got one of those. I pulled on. I don’t think we can wear these. People don’t understand how heavy this is. This thing weighs like 10 pounds. If I would put this on my neck during this episode, that’s not going to uh-

Norm:

You know we all had to do it, but try to bring that back in a suitcase. You know it almost makes you. You can’t get on because it’s too heavy. 

Bradley Sutton:

All right. So, guys, if anybody wants more of Norm’s backstory, we’re not going to. He’s got an interesting one. Write down some of these episodes. I’ve got it here 80 to 11, 327. And then that two-parter I mentioned is 460 and 461. We have talked over the years about such a wide variety of topics that probably I don’t talk about with anybody else, from Amazon post to press release, Google My Business, your Business Profile we’ve talked about. Last time we went a little bit deeper into the Google Business Profile. We talked about Amazon live and how you’re becoming an influencer. So first of all, let’s just catch up with some of the other stuff. Like what has been your focus, like of the last year? Like you still doing the Amazon influencer thing? Are you doing? You know you’ve got, I know you’ve dabbled in sourcing, You’ve been an expert in all these things that we’ve been talking about press releases. What would you say has been your main top two or three things in the last year or so? 

Norm:

Well, the big thing is the new warehouse. So Afolabi and I, Afolabi Oyerukon and I have a company called Honu Worldwide and we went from a 1200 pallet capacity to a 10,000 pallet capacity and, like just all incredible modern equipment it’s quite something. And we’re stacking pallets 70 feet high. Yeah, it’s something else. Plus, we’ve got into more of the kitting. We’ve always done fulfillment and pick pack ship, but just getting into returns now. But something we’ve never done in the past was get into doing some bottling and helping private labels. So we’ve got 72 custom premium formulas that we have and that we’re bottling for people white label and we’re not. 
 

Bradley Sutton:

In Canada or USA?
 

Norm:  
 

Both in Canada and the USA. So it’s both of the suppliers that we’re using one in Canada, one USA and they’re shipping everything over to our Pennsylvania facility. So that’s something brand spanking new, yeah. 

Bradley Sutton:

I didn’t realize. I’ve had Afolabi on the podcast. I didn’t realize you. You were a partner, a partnered up. We had him on.

Norm:

Yeah, that’s awesome. 

Bradley Sutton:

I’ve got a warehouse myself and I’m doing a little bit for other people. My capacity is a whopping maybe 50 pallets, Cause I’ve only got about 2000 square feet here and I’m pretty much at capacity because I’m doing a lot of TikTok, shop for people and things like that. So it’s kind of just hard for me to fathom 10,000 pallet capacity. Is that mostly for e-commerce sellers? 

Norm:

It’s all e-commerce sellers. 

Bradley Sutton:

Are you like where people receive Amazon shipments from China and then you’re dripping them into Amazon? Are you also doing fulfillment for, like people Shopify? 

Norm:

Exactly so we’ve got the capacity, and this is what we highly recommend is if you’re an Amazon seller don’t just ship it to Amazon, make sure that you have a like a fallback and you have that 3PL just in case something gets lost. Or you know there’s. There’s a reason why and there’s a system that we try to. It’s perpetual. We call it perpetual, like the life cycle of your ordering and if you think of your supply chain, a lot of it gets caught up when   you have to reorder. So we do something a little different and you can do this. You don’t have to do it, but we try to bring in an order we send over, let’s say, 50% over to Amazon, keep 50% in the facility. They both have triggers, so once it gets down to a certain inventory, it’ll trigger us to send over a product over to Amazon. But what we do prior to that is we work with your supplier and we’ll cut the terms, or you can do it yourself. You try to get better terms and by doing this we’ve been able to do this with a lot of suppliers over in China, where you take your order, you pay 10%, you put it into their warehouse for free. And then what you? You let’s say it’s a thousand units. You got 500 in 3PL, 500 over in Amazon. Once it gets down to 250, then the order goes, it kicks in. So 3PL ships to Amazon, order goes over, the manufacturer automatically has it done, sends it over to you, they put it back into production and you’ve got your next order ready to go and hopefully you’re paying in 30, 60 and 90 or 90 days, so it’s perpetual. If you need to fly it over, you can, but the lead time is gone. Like it’s minimal. 

Bradley Sutton:

How can you get more buyers to leave you Amazon product reviews? By following up with them in a way that’s compliant with Amazon terms of service. You can use Helium 10 follow-up in order to automatically send out Amazon’s request or review emails to any customers you want. Not just that, but you can specify when they get the message and even filter out people that you don’t want to get that message, such as people who have asked for refunds or maybe ones that you gave discounts to. For more information, visit h10.me/follow-up. You can sign up for a free account or you can sign up for a platinum plan and get 10% off for life by using the discount code SSP10. Let’s dive a little bit more into. I didn’t realize we would be talking about this, but logistics and three. Yeah, hey, we never. I know. That’s why I say this is no BS. I have no idea what we’re going to talk about. We just whatever comes out and let’s double click on it, but I think it’s a very relevant topic. Now, I’m not sure when this podcast is going to go live, but when we’re recording this. You know, one of the news stories that’s been going around is about how Amazon’s, like AWD and some, you know, DC’s are have no capacity on the West coast, you know, and so I think just throughout, even before then, on the different months, you know, people are wondering like, hey, because of these new inbound inventory placement fees, like you said, it’s like we can’t necessarily send product directly to Amazon the old way, because, like, for example, if I’m sending a full container which means I’m a pretty big baller here, you know I can do a full container, I’m not some small seller that’s actually a detriment because I’m going to be forced to pay that inventory placement fee since, theoretically, it’s only going to one location and then. So then the way that Amazon provided, where, if you don’t want to have to pay, you know, start using AWD, start using AGL and different things, but now AWD is like at capacity, and so throughout this whole year, people have been kind of, I feel like in this flux, like what am I going to do with these inventory placement fees? Should I stop using 3PL? Should I start using 3PL? Should I start using AWD? So nine months you’ve been in this, what have you found? What learnings can you share? 

Norm:

Well, I think both and myself we’ve, you know, we looked at this, as Amazon never does anything to help the seller. Now, like I’m going, they do, but you know what I mean. So if all of a sudden, there’s an attractive package out there, why? Why is it? And then how is that going to change? And so we saw a lot of this. Like in our WhatsApp group. We will have people talking about AWD all the time and how positive it is. Well, now start looking at what just happened. Now, there is I was just talking to John Dirkitz about this and there’s a positive that’s going on right now that you could say is, you know, outweighs the negative, and that is that they’re allowing now oversized and consumables into AWD, which it never did before. 

Bradley Sutton:

I remember that yeah. 

Norm:

So that, could you know, offset this. But for me I don’t know. I just I’d rather have a 3PL with a good inventory system in place, like a fulfillment system that you can work back and forth Smaller pieces into Amazon and you work back and forth closer, closer with your 3PL. The 3PL is going to be way less expensive depending on the 3PL, but the doing it this way is way less expensive and especially if you’re doing the system, that life cycle, if you’re sending things over to Amazon direct, you’re probably going to pay a lot more than going over to a 3PL and just piecing it off the way that I was just talking about it. And, by the way, I should mention something here. I know that you know about this. But HTS codes, so Afolabi, and I came out with something called this Tariff Terminator, which is very different than what it was last year Terminator, which is very different than what it was last year. Out of everybody that we’ve looked at, it was up to 80, but 70% of Amazon sellers do not have the proper HTS code. They let their Chinese seller set an HS code and it’s wrong. Set an HS code and it’s wrong. So when they get in here and guess what? Nobody. Nobody is calculating that as a part of your cost of goods. So they’re going out, they’re sourcing in China, they’re not calculating, and this could be as high as 400%. Now it’s. I don’t. I’ve never seen it that, but it can be. So you know you’re 25, 40% of your cost of goods. Is that not something that should be calculated and like for me? I was doing natural soaps and I was paying 17 percent. So we were taking a look at it and affa lobby says can you consider this castile soap? And I said yeah, it’s olive based. And he, well, how about I give you some good news Pay zero. I just stuffed 17% back in my pocket. So, out of the 70% of people that are missing the boat, they don’t have the proper tariff code and the average person that gets the proper tariff code on an order the average that we’ve been able to calculate has been $7,800. And the other thing is that these can change on a dime. 

Bradley Sutton:

Well, how would I know, though? How would I know if I’m Well, you can go to a board-. How would I know better than my? You know somebody might be reasoning, my shipper or my factory should know. So how can I be smarter than them? 

Norm:

Well, there’s a few ways of doing this. So one of the ways is just talking to your broker and making sure if it is the correct. If they can do a checking on it, you can check it yourself, but I don’t want this to be a pitch at all, but Afolabi has come up with an app that will tell you and it’s free, so you can go and you can use it when. Where’s the catch? Is that if you wanted the code, that’s where you know we would make our money. We would give you the code, but it would cost you, um, and then you go and you can save it, and sometimes your broker will come back and say, uh, you know, I’m not changing it. Well, why? You know, they just want to, you know, be pissy about it, you know, because we found a better way. So that is a way. And, plus, there is something that’s like minor, minor costs, like a buck or so, and that’s for us to monitor it. So there’s all sorts of different compliance issues and the tariffs can change on a moment’s notice and you wouldn’t know this. So if we’re monitoring it for you and I’m literally saying it’s like a buck, you would get notification that, hey, your classification just went up or it changed, or compliance just changed, and you’d have that notice. So we monitor about 10 different areas and you’d have that notice. So we monitor about 10 different areas. So you know it just protects you. And again, this is something that’s always, it always got to me, because people never calculate. Know your number, yeah, know your numbers, know your tariffs. 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, people, you know I’m probably guilty of that. I just assume that everybody’s picking the right ones. But you know, who knows, Maybe I’ve got some I’ve got my coffin shelves or something else in the wrong tariff. It’s worth looking at, you know just to give you an example. 

Norm:

You talk about those coffin shelves. Well, we brought in during COVID, we brought in these quarantine signs. They were aluminum quarantine signs and they were paying 40% and I know on that shipment it was about 15,000 bucks that they were paying. Afolabi looked at it and this is before we put this app together but he got it down to under 7% because it was the wrong classification and so it was an aluminum sign and they had it under some quarantine thing and anyways, it was changed and they saved a ton of cash just by changing the tariff. So get your brokers to go out and take a look or talk to us later. 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, so there’s a great way for people to start saving money. I mean, I think that’s one of the themes of this year. I was talking about how to save on logistics and things like that, because everybody’s thinking about profitability. I mean, you should always be thinking about profitability, but with so many new fees and inflation and different things like that, I think just 2024 is the year of thinking more about it. But this might be a topic that not a lot of people are thinking about when they’re trying to calculate where they can be more profitable. What else kind of unique things, tips and tricks you’ve got for people out there? You’re the one who always has something unique to talk about that I would say 98% of the audience is not doing. What have you found that you think people are leaving money on? 

Norm:

I’m going to go back to logistics once again, again and this is something. You know there’s other applications, there’s other tools out there that can do this, but making sure that you rethink, relook, reconfigure your packaging, so making your packaging smaller, more condensed, putting it into box and repackaging that palette. What we’ve noticed is that there’s so much empty or wasted space on a lot of these packages that you’re paying for error. And if you reconfigure that and reconfigure your container you know so now you can put a lot more into it you might be able to save 10, 20, 30%. So that’s another big savings when you’re talking about logistics. 

Bradley Sutton:

Another area. Did you know this? Did you know this? Helium 10. Actually, you know, I’m sure you know our Alerts tool which you know mainly people use for. Hey, did my dimensions get changed or did? Is there a hijacker in my listing? Did my image change? But we have a new thing where it’s an automatic thing that comes up at the top. If we detect that you are within like one inch on one side of changing a size tier, like we’ll send you a notice. And it’s kind of shocking, like in one of my accounts it was actually a different coffin shelf that I sell it. It was actually a different coffin shelf that I sell. It wasn’t that Amazon changed it. I just didn’t realize. For a year I was on the border of a size tier and it was literally the difference. If I change the package one inch and not everybody. You know, like if I’ve got a solid water bottle, like I can’t just change this unless I change the water bottle by one inch. But you know, coffin shelf, you know I’ve got some packaging in there. You know sometimes you might be able to get an inch in there by me. My next shipment that’s going to come soon it’s going to be on this new box because of this Alert, it’s going from $11 per unit fulfillment to 7.50. Whoa, so that’s like thousands of if I’m selling, you know um, like you know, a thousand units a year only. Hopefully I’m selling more than a thousand. You know like. Like you know, a thousand units a year only, hopefully I’m selling more than a thousand. You know like, let’s say, two, 3000 units, times that by three, $4 guys, that’s crazy, you know, you know like. So what he said is very accurate. Sometimes we do not have optimized packages and sometimes, yeah, it might not make too much difference, but still, your dimensional weight, you know when you ship it over here and how it fits in a container, all of that can save you money. But you might actually be on the borderline of a size you know large standard size to oversize, or something like that. And that’s where the money is made, I think. 

Norm:

Yeah, it’s just one of these things that you, you need to check. I guess I’m everybody’s talking about AI, but I’m loving AI. I’m really loving AI for what it can do and how it can help. Creating like this add ons for me like eBooks so easily. Creating graphics for the eBooks and getting them public. Getting, putting checklists up. And so the reason I’m saying that is I want people to go over, I wanna get an email address. come over, they’re going to see the add on, they’re going to see a link to a how-to video on, you know, putting, assembling something. And it’s just this extra value, giving them something, a bonus that they never expected. And all of a sudden, they’ve got this great new e-book., but it could also be, you know, something else. Like that eBook could be described in audio, or it could be just something, something different that no like for us. We were doing something with a non-alcoholic spirit and we created a recipe book. I think you know the knife story that I talk about you know once in a while, but for them we created a 52-week meal plan and every week guess what they get? The brand in front of their face with the new, really good, high-end meal plan. And how did we put it together? We went to chefs all around and we provided the steak knives that we have or the Damascus knives that we have, and in return, they got the knife set in return for recipes, and sometimes they gave us pictures, sometimes they gave us a video, but we got the recipe, we compiled that, put it into the weekly meal plan and then we combined two recipe books. So now they get the recipe book, they get that, and there’s so many things that you can do. 

Bradley Sutton:

Is the recipe book tied to the actual knife set then. So if I buy the knife set on Amazon and then you have an insert card that says, hey, we can give you this free recipe book, is that kind of like what’s going on? 

Norm:

We don’t even say that, because what we’re trying to do is surprise them. Where we get them is. We’re saying, hey, get a lifetime registration instead of the 30 day. You know, here’s a lifetime warranty on it and they click on it. And then, when they get there, they see these videos, they see the food plan that they’re going to get and they see the recipe book. All we need is your email and we get the double opt in, and we’ve grown that just to thousands of people now getting that and really commenting. And now what’s happening is we’re getting a lot of user generated content because they’re putting together all the content based on their meal plan. It was really nice, but the ability to do that nowadays is so easy to use, this to use. There’s an app out there that I’ve been using called Pencila. Nobody knows about it, but it’s called Pencila, like pencil with an A. It is a buddy of mine. I put it together, All I need to do is point it, click and I’ve got a month or two worth of content. Now I’m not talking about crappy content. I’m talking about everything from the image is better than what you normally would be prompted. Everything about the social media is perfect. This is with high quality aesthetics and it’s literally and you can check it out. If you wanted to Bradley, just go to Pencila. It’s a free account. Go and check it out and you’ll be blown away. So that’s another thing. I used to spend a ton on social media managers. Most of them sucked, and now I’ve got something that’s pretty damn good and I could just talk to. You know, Kelsey, I just, you know, get Kelsey to post and it does it automatically. It’s so easy. 

Bradley Sutton:

What is the difference between having a or that a human is doing and what like human you know task does it take over? 

Norm:

When you’re looking at a social media manager, there’s three things that you look for. You’re looking for a copy, you’re looking for creative, you’re looking for engagement. You can get two of them, but I’ve never found anybody that could do all three. And with this it gives you great copy, it gives you incredible images, it pulls them right from your site. Then it just makes them even better and you can like, let’s say, it was that non-alcoholic spirit, I could just have the product, pull in the product and then tell it whatever background, put it into a party scene, a bar scene, have a bartender pouring a drink, and it just can do almost anything. So then, on the engagement side, because you’re being able to put it into your social media on a regular basis probably more than regular. Now, you’re getting a lot more quality, a lot of quality engagement going back and forth from your followers. Now, if there’s anything that I might want to do is go out and find that person that could just engage. You know might be an influencer, it might be somebody that could drive some traffic, but at least you’ve got those covered. And it’s like it costs nothing, like I think it was. It wasn’t even 30 bucks for a month. You know it’s, it’s very inexpensive, but these type of things are coming out now when you’re going like Pictory, Pictory is great for videos. Text to video, audio to video. Sometimes like if I’m doing something and it’s just audio, I’ll go to Pictory and just throw it in there and then it’ll come up with a video for me. If it’s a video that I just want out on the net and I just want it picking up some keywords and there’s some audio out there. So these are some things that are fantastic, that people are missing out on. Then you start looking at the whole email blast and newsletter thing. So you know, our buddy, Kevin’s come out with, you know, a really great newsletter and luckily, you know, I’ve been able to sit down with a couple of cigars and kind of here, Kevin give me a couple of tips and he’s been able to do that and I think we have a pretty good newsletter and what’s happening with that newsletter. Now, if I was a brand not a service provider, not a podcast but if I was a brand, why are you not doing something like that, where you can do this really good quality, like my brand story is me. So I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it, but with the Lunch with Norm newsletter, I talk about my personal stories and then I turn those stories into business lessons and then we have you know the Amazon, Walmart, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know information for from whatever comes up that week. Well, imagine that if you were a brand and you could like uh, what’s the name of? bees the lips, uh, burt’s bees, yeah. So if they came up and they had this incredible brand story, they have great brand awareness and most of the time in their images they don’t even have to put any type of text because it’s just the visual. That’s so good.

Norm:

But if, if you could do something like that and stick to your brand story, stick to the consistency, and come out with a newsletter and you’re talking about other things, about natural products, about just other things in general benefits, features, about your product, and you might even have an area for your influencers to talk a little bit about or even promote. Well, now you’re starting to build a community and that’s the area, like years ago, when these aggregators were looking at Amazon stores. It didn’t matter if you were retail or if you were on other platforms, they only cared if you were on Amazon, it didn’t matter. You weren’t going to get any extra zeros on the end, it was just they were looking for Amazon. And then back in I guess it was 21 when the aggregator explosion happened and then all of a sudden, hey, if you had a Walmart store or if you were into retail, if you went Omni channel, now you’re going to get more. Well, that all really depends on. The next chapter is your community. So we’ve been spending a lot of time building community, our community, and like for us it’s. You’ve got Kevin and I have the Marketing Misfits podcast. We’ve got the Lunch with Norm podcast. We’ve got three different other types of ways to communicate with us through the newsletter, the WhatsApp group, the Facebook group and now the community has just started to really skyrocket, which is great, and the loyalty is incredible. Our WhatsApp group runs itself. I don’t even have to be on it. The podcast all the questions that come in the questions go into the WhatsApp group. The WhatsApp group answers itself. The newsletter man we’re not as big as Kevin’s list. We have about 6,000 people on our newsletter, our newsletter. I don’t think we’ve gone below 50% open rate, which really means nothing but 50% to 60%. Our highest has been 70 something, but typically it’s around the 50 plus range and our click-through rate is anywhere from seven up. So it could be seven to 10%, which the average click-through rate is between the 2 and 4% on a newsletter. And that’s the community driving all of this. And so my brand is my personal brand, which is the bloody beard. I mean if I shave it, there goes my brand. My wife hates it and I got to keep it on. But that’s something that I think a lot of brands, a lot of brands are missing out on is the ability to create a really loyal, engaged community. 

Bradley Sutton:

Speaking about branding and stuff, you know, last year you talked about doing a lot of live selling on Amazon and being an Amazon influencer. You know you did that for a while. Like, what was your takeaways from there? Like, where did you generate the most revenue? Was it doing the lives or were you also doing, you know, like video reviews that would that would go in the you know carousels on product videos, because I think that that’s actually having a resurgence now, where people are trying to get extra money and I think it’s a great way for people to get some extra money out there is becoming an Amazon influencer. So what can you tell us about your journey there? 

Norm:

Yeah, it’s a grind. So if you could do this full time or even, you know, 4 hours a day. It’s a great way to make some money. I think our best month. We weren’t making, you know, uh, five figures, but we were making. I think our best month was about $3,500, which, doing it part-time just to see if you could do it, it wasn’t too bad. And I’d never got to really execute the way I wanted to. Like, we had a whole system in place on how to get these done and it wasn’t even going to be by me. So this is, this is some of the secret sauce. I was going to be shipping out a lot of the product to Mexico. I was having my hands, like the background behind me, so all you would see is my hands, and then I was going to insert the beard, you know, once in a while it with the same background and me doing the voiceover. So it was costing me next to nothing to do the video production and I had the studio all set up. But the first time we shipped down a bunch of products it got lost. So then it just kind of turned me off doing that. But everything was automated. So if we came in, if you have the time to think about it and work with automation and go out and spend the money on Fiverr or on whoever to do the automation, or use Make or use Zapier any of those If you’re not good with it, hire somebody that is. So we would go out, we would get an Amazon listing, that Amazon listing. So as soon as the person said they wanted a video done, it went up. The Amazon listing went into a copy summarizer. We went in, we scanned the listing. It summarized it. We had it where. Okay, here are the 20 questions I want to ask. If I was going to be doing a video interview on it, we would take that. It would automate it, go over and do a TikTok script. We wanted three 15 to 30 second TikTok scripts and it just went all the way down. YouTube was there and then I just sit here, change the background a little bit and start rolling and Kelsey would put up the text. So I would have a teleprompter and I would just go. It was just work. But even today I haven’t done them in months. And last week I got a check not a huge check, it was 190, I think from Amazon, but I haven’t done anything. It just keeps coming in. So if you want to get into this, it’s not dead. A lot of people went away from it because Amazon changed your commission structure, especially for the lives. So that’s one of the reasons why we just said, oh, forget it. If they don’t want our time, you know to do this, then we’ll go and we’ll do something else. But if you want and it’s such, you know, people don’t understand this and I’m not sure if this is still in place it might’ve changed but so many people do not have a video, not a single video on their listing. And I know in the past, I, you know, people would send me product to do and you go to the listing. They didn’t have a video. So there’s no way for me to do a video. To get it onto their listing through the influencer program, you have to have at least one video. So there’s so many ways. 

Bradley Sutton:

You probably didn’t know this, but as of I know you didn’t know this because we just launched it this week. In the Helium 10 Chrome extension, which I’m sure you use, there’s now a toggle, if you, if for those of you out there, the million people who have the Chrome extension, you can toggle it now to the influencer version and so we’re showing you like, hey, how many videos are on the top carousel? How many brand videos are there? How many are on the bottom carousel? We’re actually trying to launch a whole bunch of stuff that will help influencers just people who want to be influencers on their own and want to review products to make some money. But also it could be a way for even Amazon sellers to generate some extra income or kind of see what’s going on with the competition. Maybe they’re looking at a few niches and maybe they want to get into a niche where there’s not that many influencer videos out there, because they know they’ve got a good community where, as soon as they launch a product, they’re going to be able to get, you know, some UGC or some influencers to make videos and then they’ll have a competitive advantage over over the. You know who else is showing in the search results. So, guys, anybody who has a Helium 10 Chrome extension make sure to check that out. 

Norm:

That’s great. And the other thing I can tell you is that I at least, when we got into the influencer and then both Kelsey and I both started doing it and he did fantastic. Like I remember seeing on his TikTok channel at 200, 200,000 views, 500,000 views. He was doing great. We even had a deal website set up where every day we would post new deals of the day and we were trying to get groups to pick it up. If I was doing this, if this was the only thing I was doing. You could get some really good money doing this but and I express this. Get to know just like with Helium 10 and you get Freedom Ticket and you learn Amazon, because it’s such a big beast I highly recommend. I wanted to do a course on it, but just, uh, because there’s so many different angles. For the influencer side, understand it like take bloody courses If there’s, if they’re out there, go and learn. If you’re not an expert in something, hire somebody to teach you. You know, it’s just, it’s very important. 

Bradley Sutton:

Super important. Yeah, you know, some people just like to jump into something they don’t even know what they’re doing and then they, they fail or they don’t have much success and then they give up. Well, no, if they, if they would have done it right from day one, they probably would have had better success. So, actually by the time people are listening to this episode, we have an employee at Helium 10, a coworker of mine who, on the side, in her spare time I hope it’s in her spare time, she’s not taking Helium 10 hours to do it, but she’s a she’s a big time influencer. She makes thousands of dollars a month on episode, we have an employee at Helium 10, a coworker of mine who, on the side, in her spare time I hope it’s in her spare time, she’s not taking Helium 10 hours to do it, but she’s a big time influencer. She makes thousands of dollars a month on it and I actually recorded a course with her for the Freedom Ticket program. So you’re plugging Freedom Ticket. You didn’t even realize that this is actually a real thing, but it’s going to go, I think it’s going to go inside of Freedom Ticket or somewhere that anybody can get to where she’s teaching me some of those things about, you know, the basics of how to record videos and how to edit them and how to, you know, look for opportunity. But it’s just amazing how she was just showing me like she just goes around her house sometimes. It’s not like she goes and buys stuff to make a video for, necessarily, unless she thinks it’s a big opportunity but she just goes around her house and scans it, sees if it’s on Amazon and makes a video on it and she can get some, get some commission. So cool things coming in Helium 10. Speaking of Helium 10, now the tools that you do know. About something I’ve been asking people this year for you and your team, what would you say is your favorite Helium 10 tool or function? 

Norm:

I go back to the basics. And it’s your Reverse ASIN, you know I’ve, and it’s your Reverse ASIN, you know I’ve being able to extract that information and just find out. My competitive, competitive analysis is everything. And if you don’t know your competitor, if you, if you win, like, if you, if you get a bunt or a home run, you’re just lucky. You have to know your competitor, what they’re doing. Also, the review side when you can extract the reviews and see what you know, people, what people are really saying and what their main pain points are or what the positives are, and then use it against them, like you know, basically spin it to your favor. So those are, you know, either screw Scribbles because it’s so easy and I haven’t used Scribbles in a while but that was one of my favorites but Cerebro I use all the time and I really love that. 

Bradley Sutton:

If there was something I mean it doesn’t even have to be Amazon really Maybe it’s about TikTok shop, or maybe it’s about logistics or something. If there’s something that you think, if I gave you keys to our Helium 10 product roadmap and you were the CTO for a day, what would you commission us to do that can make your life easier? Or other Amazon sellers that we don’t currently have? 

Norm:

You know at least I don’t think you have but if you had a fulfillment system that would tie into not only Amazon but into Walmart or into Shopify, you know, that would be great, Like that whole logistics side that we just talked about, and there’s other people that have that. But because you’re kind of an all-in-one app and you’re expanding out that way, I’d probably be looking at that’s something that’s bloody important nowadays and, like you were talking about just on the configuration, you’re starting to go down that path. So, yeah, that would be a logical step. 

Bradley Sutton:

We do have inventory forecasting but, yeah, right now it only ties to the Amazon, but then people who are selling on TikTok shop or Shopify or Walmart they might be selling the same SKU across. So, yeah, that’s a good one. That definitely is on our roadmap to try and integrate that so that you know what’s going on in which marketplace. Well, Norm, you never fail to drop some knowledge bombs when you come on here. That’s why you’ve been invited back more times than almost anybody else. So I appreciate you coming on here and wishing the most of success, and next year let’s see if your wife has finally won versus your personal brand. 

Norm:

I highly doubt it. I don’t think she’s going to win that. 

Bradley Sutton:

I don’t think she’s going to win that. I don’t think she’s going to win that battle. We’ll see you with an even longer beard next season. 

Norm:

All right, very good, thanks for having me on. 

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• Freedom Ticket: Taught by Amazon thought leader Kevin King, get A-Z Amazon strategies and techniques for establishing and solidifying your business.
• Helium 10: 30+ software tools to boost your entire sales pipeline from product research to customer communication and Amazon refund automation. Make running a successful Amazon or Walmart business easier with better data and insights. See what our customers have to say.
• Helium 10 Chrome Extension: Verify your Amazon product idea and validate how lucrative it can be with over a dozen data metrics and profitability estimation.
• SellerTrademarks.com: Trademarks are vital for protecting your Amazon brand from hijackers, and sellertrademarks.com provides a streamlined process for helping you get one.