#614 – My First 6-Figure Month On Amazon!

Join us in this episode as we welcome back Shan Shan Fu, a dynamic Amazon entrepreneur whose journey has been nothing short of inspiring. From her early days selling face masks during the pandemic, Shan Shan has successfully transitioned into the fashion industry with her thriving brand, Millennials in Motion. She shares her remarkable achievement of hitting her first six-figure month and reveals the innovative ways she manages to live rent-free in a $6,000 per-month New York apartment through the platform Kindred. Shan Shan’s story is one of resilience and creativity, as she recounts her evolution into selling sexy tights and the lessons learned from her ventures into other product categories like dresses and lingerie.

Explore the strategies that Shan Shan and other e-commerce entrepreneurs use to refine their products on Amazon. Listen in as we discuss the significance of market research platforms like PickFu and Helium 10 Audience for product validation and consumer insights. Discover how Shan Shan tests new product ideas, the importance of consumer feedback, and how a 20% vote threshold can predict a product’s potential success. Personal experiences are shared to illustrate how these methods align with actual sales results, highlighting the value of comprehensive data in making informed business decisions.

This episode also uncovers the tactics behind selling low-priced products on Amazon and how exposure through high-profile features can enhance brand recognition. Shan Shan discusses her use of strategic keywords to optimize product listings and her aspirations for expanding beyond Amazon into other marketplaces. Additionally, we touch on networking in the Amazon selling community and the benefits of attending events like Helium 10 Elite meetups. Valuable insights are offered on navigating new U.S. regulations, leveraging tools like Helium 10 Adtomic, and the importance of self-management in advertising as you scale your business. Don’t miss out on Shan Shan’s journey and the invaluable lessons for sellers of all levels.

In episode 614 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Shan Shan discuss:

• 00:00 – Leveling Up
• 02:21 – Discovering New Apps and Services
• 05:40 – Using PickFu to Vet Product Ideas
• 06:50 – Market Research With Helium 10’s Audience Tool Powered by PickFu
• 11:53 – Selling Low-Priced Products on Amazon
• 12:16 – The Influence of Taylor Swift
• 15:54 – Impact of High-Profile Fashion Feature
• 19:22 – Navigating Amazon FBA Strategies
• 20:16 – Scaling Inventory for E-Commerce Success
• 26:27 – Transitioning to Full-Time Amazon Business
• 29:33 – Networking and Helium 10 Strategies

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today we’ve got a guest back on the show that was first on the podcast years ago when she was just starting out, and now she’s going to share how she’s leveled up to her first ever six-figure month, as well as how she stays in $6,000 per month apartments for free. 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 completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And back for the let me just count here one, two, three, fourth time on the podcast. We’ve got Shan Shan here from now in New York. Before a first time, I think you were in San Francisco and then you were in Miami. This one of the times I had you, and now you’re living in New York.

Shan Shan:

That’s right, hey, Bradley, you got me back.

Bradley Sutton:

Now show, show, show us quick for those watching on YouTube. Like your view right now out the window, just people can see how high up you are and like what kind of a cool place you’re at, because you show me, you pan the camera over, you’re like in a high rise or something right yeah, this is one of the tallest towers in New York.

Shan Shan:

You see, right here wow, oh, my goodness peanuts and my guess is this apartment’s about six grand. But I am living here for free.

Bradley Sutton:

That is crazy. So first of all, let’s just talk about that really quick. How in the world can I stay in a $6,000 a month apartment in New York skyscraper for free?

Shan Shan:

So two years ago I really wanted to move to New York but I didn’t want to pay double rent because I was also in Miami. So a friend of mine suggested a startup called Kindred. It’s livekindred.com and the way it works is that for every night that I have someone stay at my Miami home and this is invite only, so you can own it’s all people who are vetted. They check their LinkedIn’s. Then I get a credit and that one credit I can use anywhere in the world. So I put up my Miami home for people to stay in. Anyone listening is welcome to stay there if you can get into the platform. And then I go to New York and I lived here for five months for free this year.

Bradley Sutton:

That is insane. All right, well, okay, I learned something new. I’ve never heard of that in my life. Just when you think you’ve tapped out with a number of different apps and services that there could be, I learned about something new that somebody much more creative than me thought up. That’s pretty cool. Now it’s funny. I reached out because I follow you on LinkedIn or somewhere and I saw you had just hit a milestone.

But now, really quick, for people who maybe are listening to Shan Shan for the first time, if you want to get a little bit more of her backstory, get a pen out. Let me give you, her episode. She’s been on so you can learn all about her journey. First time she was on the podcast was in 2021, on episode 234. And then she came back and was in episode 344. And then she was in episode 462 as well, and so now anyway. So, as I was saying, I saw you had put a message up. Maybe it was on your Facebook, LinkedIn I’m not sure where you had hit your first six figure not year, but month with your Millennials in Motion brand. Did I get that right?

Shan Shan:

Yes, this October I hit 100K.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome. Now you’ve come a long ways from that first episode where your main product was face masks. You know, like during COVID, like right now you’re not doing any face mask anymore, right?

Shan Shan:

There’s still a little bit of inventory, but no, I don’t launch any more face masks.

Bradley Sutton:

So what is your like? What is the great majority of your revenue? What category? Now?

Shan Shan:

The vast majority is sexy tights.

Bradley Sutton:

How did you choose that like as a, you know, like somebody in the, what’s it called? When you’re, it’s like there’s an acronym for, like you know, face masks. Is it PDP or something like that? Or, like you know, protective gear or things like that? You know, might you know, venture into something adjacent, but to go from that into you know tights, how did that come about?

Shan Shan:

So what happened during the pandemic was that in China, every factory that could make face masks would make face masks. So, let’s say you were making diapers. Suddenly you switched to making face masks because the demand for face masks was global. It was insane, right, um? But then in 2021, when face mask demand died, all those factories went back to what they were originally producing. And because I was selling cloth face masks, a lot of them went back to clothing, which is what they were selling before. So I had a lot of contacts in clothing and I personally love sexy socks, tights, things like that. So I thought, hey, why not, let’s try it. I know I need to diversify and I tried a bunch of things. Some of them failed, like dresses and lingerie, but socks and tights succeeded, and since then I’ve just kind of doubled down that category and I just kept growing it. And since I last talked to you, Brad, I’ve now expanded to belts, arm warmers. But I also had a failure as well. I tried to expand into non-clothing products. It was a Pickleball pillow.

Bradley Sutton:

Pickleball pillow.

Shan Shan:

Yes.

Bradley Sutton:

What even is that?

Shan Shan:

So I had this silly idea. I I thought you know what pickleball is so big right now? Why don’t I just make this like plush pillow? That looks like a Pickleball.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh okay, I was like how would you use a pillow? While I was thinking of like something you use while you’re playing pickleball. I couldn’t quite picture, but now that makes sense okay.

Shan Shan:

So it was just an idea I came up with. It turned out to be a terrible idea and it did not sell on Amazon, um, and it failed. But thankfully my other categories of products kept succeeding, so I my sales still kept going up, um, but valuable lesson learned.

Bradley Sutton:

Now I remember before I don’t remember which of those episodes, I mentioned one of your ways to vet product ideas was how you know you would launch them first on Etsy, and so is that still what you’re doing? To like know that, hey, this product is going to be a success or not, or it’s worth trying on Amazon. Are you still vetting your ideas through Etsy, or you have other ways to kind of like not, you know, nobody can guarantee success on Amazon, but to kind of like better your chances at success.

Shan Shan:

Yeah, funny, you should ask, because Etsy is still what I use as a great way to vet clothing. But the reason why I think, the number one reason why I think the pickleball plush failed was because you can’t really use the Etsy strategy that I shared with you on a standalone product that hasn’t even been invented yet. Right, it just doesn’t really work, right, it just doesn’t really work. So instead, I actually should have and I learned this after the fact used a platform called PickFu. It’s a platform now that I use for both clothing and non-clothing products to vet, because the strategy I taught is amazing when you’re trying to figure out if your product is a top 20% winner or an 80% loser.

Shan Shan:

But it doesn’t help you when you have a new idea, a new entrant, and it’s a standalone, because with, let’s say, top tights and socks, you would put 10 products and then two would get the most votes and then you knew that that would be the ones that succeeded, right. But if you have one pickleball pillow that doesn’t really work, you know you can launch it on Etsy and it’ll give you random stats and it might be helpful. But what are you comparing it against? Yeah, right, so you don’t know if it’s top, 20% or bottom. So what I should have done is I should have posted my product the Pickleball Pillow on PickFu and just to share. Pickfu is a platform where you can have people all across America basically reply to polls about your product and what they like, what they didn’t like, and they give really detailed descriptions.

Bradley Sutton:

And we have that inside of Helium 10. It’s from PickFu. We don’t call it PickFu inside of Helium 10, but it literally is PickFu and it’s called Helium 10 Audience. For those who have Helium 10, it’s the same price as if you were just to go to PickFu and you guys are able to use that. But this is absolutely a great. You know, sometimes I think people think of PickFu or Helium 10 Audience as, oh, I’m just going to test my you know which main image is going to be best for my listing, which is a very valid, you know, like a very valid way of using it. But please continue on this, because I think it’s important that people understand there’s more use to doing the using these kinds of services than just, you know, split testing your images.

Shan Shan:

Exactly, and I was predominantly using it for product research. Um, so what I should have done is I should have put like a picture of my pickleball pillow against other similar-ish types of products, maybe like a soccer pillow or other pickleball accessories that people would buy, and then ask questions like hey, if you were buying a pickleball gift for a pickleball lover, which one would you buy? Or, you know, if you want to get a plush toy, which one would you get? And try to see if I could get 20% of the votes to go into my product. I didn’t do that, so I failed and lost a lot of money 20 or 80?

You. Usually everything that I found on Amazon follows a 20 80 rule, which is the top 20% would do 80% of the sales.

Bradley Sutton:

Talk about the scenario, though, like how many options are you putting? And then are you, you’re only looking for 20% of the votes to pick yours or expand on that a little bit.

Shan Shan:

Yeah, so you just want to hit that like approximately 20%. So if I was doing tights I would put 10 tights as an option.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, wow, okay.

Shan Shan:

Who that got the most votes would be probably the best sellers.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah.

Shan Shan:

I was launching a new product like the pickleball pillow, then I would have put like 10 different pickleball gifts right and be like if you were buying it for a pickleball fan, which one would you buy? And if you know two, three of these products got most of the votes, then I would know.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, that makes sense, cause at first, I was like I was thinking like when I do images, I’m used to only doing three. I’m like, well, I want to only want 20%. That would be like the ones that loses. But now it makes sense. You’re talking about putting 10 out there and then seeing what most you know at least 20. If there’s a couple of products that get that portion of the vote, so that makes all the sense in the world. Not sure on what main image you images you should choose from. Or maybe you don’t know whether buyers would be interested in your product at a certain price point. Perhaps you want feedback on your new brand or company logo? Get instant and detailed market feedback from actual Amazon Prime members by using Helium 10 Audience. Just enter in your poll or questions and, within a short period of time, 50 to 100 or even more Amazon buyers will give you detailed feedback on what resonates with them the most. For more information, go to h10.me forward slash audience. So what’s an example of something that you have used this positive or negative? As far as on the. You know you said you didn’t use it on the pillow, but where you have like. Oh wow, I was so sure that this product was going to be good, but nobody voted for it. Or man, this one that I didn’t think was that even great. Everybody voted for and it became successful.

Shan Shan:

Yeah. So I still use my Etsy technique and it’s still very, very effective, but now I just add on the PickFu for my clothing products. So when I launch now, I always launch about like 10 at a time and I will run a bunch of polls on PickFu and try to see if I can narrow down, if people would pick my product over the competitor or which of my 10 they would pick, and the results are pretty consistent with the sales on Amazon. So it’s definitely helped me make a lot of decisions, because the more data you can get, the better. It’s definitely helped me make a lot of decisions because the more data you can get, the better. And so now Etsy plus PickFu is basically my primary way to do product research.

Bradley Sutton:

I’m looking at one of your top sellers. Now let me show it to the audience. Those are watching on YouTube. Uh, it looks like this. Uh, this particular one here. You’ve sold more than, or to 2000 different customers, so you’re selling, you know, thousands and thousands of dollar’s worth of this product. Um, how long has this been one of your top sellers? Because it only has like 261 reviews. So, so it seems like maybe it’s one of even your newer products and it’s already just like crushing it out there, it seems.

Shan Shan:

That one I’ve got to thank Taylor Swift. So Taylor wore those snake tights not the specific one that’s mine, but just something similar during her reputation tour. And then her Eras tour has been so big this year and last year and everyone that wants to dress up as Taylor, they would often get these snake tights. And then it just becomes like a snowball, because you go to high school you see your friends wearing it, so then you decide to get snake tights and then it just kind of becomes a very popular style.

Bradley Sutton:

So, um, how are people finding it like? I’m sure you didn’t put like Taylor swift in your listing because that would probably, you know, shut you down, but were you able to just get you know because you had the word snake and tights, you know, in your listing, cause that would have probably, you know, shut you down, but were you able to just get you know because you had the word snake and tights? You know in your listing that that’s how people were finding it just typing in snake tights, or were they actually typing in Taylor Swift tights, or what?

Shan Shan:

Yeah, it was really just optimizing for the word snake tights. Um, some people would Google Taylor Swift, but then snake tights were enough. Um, and if you have a good products and you look like a legit brand and you know I’ve been doing tights for about you know a couple of years now um, I eventually got Amazon’s choice tag on that snake tights. So, for a long time, if you were to Google snake tights, I would be Amazon’s choice. So, uh, I I got lots of sales from that. So, thank you, Taylor.

Bradley Sutton:

Are you leveraging TikTok shop at all, because I would think TikTok shop is obviously big for influencer type things and making things go viral. Do you have a presence on there or just in TikTok in general?

Shan Shan:

You know , I really wish I could say yes. I was just at this happy hour for founders called the Million Dollar Seller Club in New York and everyone was talking about it, but I have not gotten on it yet. One, just because I don’t know what to do. I need to do more research on it. And two a lot of people are saying that if your product is under $20 to $30, it may not be worth it to go on TikTok shops. My product is like $10 to $15 so um, I need to dig more. I would love, love to be on it, especially if it works.

Bradley Sutton:

It actually helps. You know, amazon sales a lot of times too, like there’s still a lot of people who view TikTok and then they do it for trends, but then they’re they. They don’t really trust TikTok too much to buy from, so maybe they’ll go to a link, but instead of, instead of buying on TikTok shop, they’re like, let me see if this brand is on Amazon, because I trust Amazon and but yeah, like I think it is. You know, the more the most successful ones might be the ones that are um, um, that have a higher price point. Uh, because influencer driven, and then the influencers are looking to promote products that they can get a better commission on. You know, because 10% of 30 bucks is obviously better than 10% of $10, you know. But who knows, you know, maybe, maybe can, it can take off and that could be another revenue stream for you. So, other than Etsy and Amazon USA, are you on any other Amazon marketplaces or anything else like Walmart, or, or? These are just the two main places that you’re focusing on.

Sean Shan:

Amazon’s bulk of my sales at the moment, but I’m also on Amazon Canada, amazon UK and Walmart.

Bradley Sutton:

How are those going for you?

Shan Shan:

They are not doing the greatest just because I feel like I focus so much of my time on Amazon as you should. That’s where all the sales are. So that’s just a lack of focus on my part. Second for me would be Etsy, because I do all my product research on Etsy. So I still have a very active Etsy presence. But I guess next year, hopefully, I can come back, Brad, and talk about did TikTok shop work for me and did I increase my revenue in any other channel but Amazon?

Bradley Sutton:

Now, one thing I was going to say. I remember I didn’t remember until I saw it in the notes here that Mel gave me, but then I did remember you were somehow featured right alongside Louis Vuitton and Chanel in some fashion shoot. Did that have any long-term effects? I’m sure it got you some notoriety, or hey, hey, it was just kind of like a, a cool thing to do, um, or is this something that you think people should hey, like, like, try and get you know, featured on, on, on these kinds of things, because it can get you know, good notoriety for your brand? What would you say about that?

Shan Shan:

I think success breeds success. You know, if you and that’s part of the reason why you know if I hit a milestone, I do publish it on social media because, you know, good things just pop up and, Bradley, you’re one of them. When you popped up, when you saw my CNBC video and the editor the fashion editor of New York Times, found one of my tights and really liked it and asked me to ship it to Ghana, where they were doing this like photo shoot, and you know it worked out. It was a great feature and that month I had amazing sales on my Shopify. Like every day there were sales I sold out of that style of tights, but unfortunately that only lasted about a month because it is a um, a timely article.

Shan Shan:

People stop reading it after a while. But it was also natural. I personally struggled with influencers where it’s not natural, like they don’t actually use a product, it looks like an ad, whereas you know an authority figure like the New York Times putting your product on their models. That looks very legit. So I would definitely do it again if it was something legitimate like that and those are hard to get into. I just got lucky, but I would love to do more of that.

Bradley Sutton:

Talk a little bit about the challenges you face with having a lower price point product on Amazon. Amazon fees are a lot right. So even if your price is low, when you’re talking about $10 products right off the top, off the top, you know there’s Amazon’s fees and you know there’s advertising. How, I mean, are you? How profitable are you? And then how are you able to maintain that profitability when you know your price point is so low?

Shan Shan:

So a really good thing happened in January 2024. Prior to that, I had an extremely low profit margin of like 14%, and I’d say the average Amazon seller does about 20% to 40%. So 14% is not good, and that’s just because in the women’s clothing and that’s why I tell everyone like, don’t do women’s clothing is because there’s a 10% to 20% return rate. So that really kills your margin. But thanks to Temu and Shein being so aggressive in the US market, amazon released an insane fee reduction for the clothing category, but only if you’re under 15 bucks. So it went from a fee of 17% to 5%. So just like that overnight you got a 12% increase on your profit margin. So now I’m at like 20 to 30% now. So, it almost doubled my profit. It was amazing. Now do I think this will last forever? No, I think that they’re just doing it because Temu and Shein have been aggressive. But I heard that Biden is rolling in a new regulation that makes it harder for Temu and Shein to operate in the US.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, I’ve seen rumors of that. So once that rolls out, it’s that shipping, it’s that shipping, it’s that shipping. That’s how they’re able to offer such low prices is because there’s the shipping loophole where people don’t have to pay import tax. And then I think the Chinese government subsidizes some kind of shipping where it costs factories like $1 or less, pretty much cheaper than what we can ship in the domestic states. Somebody can ship overseas somehow from China for cheaper, but I think they’re trying to do away with those loopholes. So that’ll be interesting to see.

Shan Shan:

Yes, it’s crazy and I’m glad they’re putting that regulation. But if that regulation does roll out, I can easily see Amazon increasing that fee again, because 5% transaction fee is like unheard of.

Bradley Sutton:

Now this one, that you started selling thousands of units a month. Like, you don’t start off with thousands, I would assume, like you know, 5,000 units of stock. So, like do you always start out low, like 500 or a thousand, and then see what takes off? Uh, or, and then just hope you don’t run out and like airship If you’re about to run out, if something goes viral, or how do you, how can you predict when one product all of a sudden start selling 2000 and another one is selling a hundred or 200 units a month? Uh, how do you make? How do you keep track of your inventory?

Shan Shan:

So thanks to Etsy and PickFu, I have a pretty good idea of which ones are winners. But what I don’t know is how much of a winner it is. I don’t know if it’s like a thousand pieces or 10,000 and that you don’t know until you just start selling it, because I don’t have a ton of capital to invest. I bootstrap this company myself. I only always start with about 30 pieces on the first go around and it’s just to get the data, just to get the data from Amazon. This is a winner or loser. Then in my next order I’ll do a couple hundred, see how fast that sells, and then, if it keeps going well, then I’ll go 1,000, then 10,000. So I do it slowly and it’s safer this way, but also slower, so you definitely don’t get rich overnight, but then you also don’t lose a lot of money.

Bradley Sutton:

Are you shipping everything direct to Amazon? Are you using 3PLs? You also don’t lose a lot of money. Are you using any of Amazon’s logistic companies, like AWD, AGL and stuff like that? How are you managing your supply chain?

Shan Shan:

I’m purely shipping it to FBA, so they’re running everything for me. However, I got hit pretty hard with the placement fees this year, which is a really big cut. And for those of you who don’t know, placement fees this year which is a really big cut, and for those of you who don’t know placement fees is Amazon used to, for free, take your product that you send to the warehouse and distribute it all over their hundreds of warehouses for free, and now they charge you for it, and it’s a lot. They charge me about 30 cents a piece, but when your product is only 10 bucks, 30 cents is a lot.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, that’s something that definitely a lot of people have had to, uh had to deal with for sure. What’s your advertising strategy, like are you doing videos? Uh, are you doing sponsored brand or just regular keyword targeting? Um as like what, and, and how much are you investing? Um, how much are you paying out Amazon for advertising? What’s your budget, like how much are you paying Amazon for advertising? What’s your budget like?

Shan Shan:

I mostly do Amazon pay-per-click and I currently do about 10% of sales. So if I did a hundred K that I did in October, I spent about 10k to 15k on pay-per-click ads. Um, and I make sure that the ACoS those 10 to 15k is break even or even you know less, better, better or break even.

Bradley Sutton:

You just managing yourself using an agency or

Sean Shan:

Just managing myself. When you bootstrap a business, you kind of do everything yourself. I personally found doing it yourself the most successful. I found that you get more attention on it more time. But that’s just me.

Bradley Sutton:

You know your own keywords and you know what is relevant, and not a lot of times. So that’s what I always suggest for people, at least in the beginning, like, like, maybe people grow to a phase where it’s like, hey, I’m uh, you know, I’m doing like a million dollars a month now, 500 grand a month and I have now 1000 campaigns. I can’t do it all myself. I don’t want to hire, you know, like an employee. You know, maybe, okay, maybe, you need to hire out an agency, but at least by then you know what’s good and what’s bad with advertising.

Bradley Sutton:

You know how to judge, like, if somebody else is doing a good job. If you try and like, just outsource your, your, your PPC, right at the beginning, you know, like, how do you even know, like, if they’re doing a good or bad job? So I like, I like your strategy better. And then you know, now that Helium 10 Adtomic is in the Diamond plan, you know, if you find yourself strapped for time, I would say, hey, you start automating some of your rules, that whatever rules that you’re doing with your spreadsheets and stuff, just import that into Helium 10. And then you know what used to take one hour might only take five minutes now.

Sean Shan Fu:

Yeah, exactly, do it yourself first, so that you can be the best judge first, so that you can be the best judge.

Bradley Sutton:

For creating your listings, be it images you know, like your photo shoots, the copy for your bullet points, your a plus content. What’s your strategy as far as how you tackle uh, each, each, uh project? To know, like, hey, what, what? What should the main image show, what? What should my, what should my, how should my models pose, and what should, um, you know what? What should I put in my, my, my description, my a plus content, like what’s your. What’s your game plan for that?

Sean Shan:

I do find that it’s so important that the main image is good. Um, and I used to. I just I used to like personally do the photo shoot with my friends. I would have my female friends model for me and then I would cut. Cut them out from using Gimp. Gimp is like a free photoshop and it took so much time, but thanks to AI, it’s so quick. Now it takes me like five seconds using an app called. I believe it’s called. I’m going to tell you the name of it, but it’s instant. I can just give it the picture and it just knows how to remove the background, make it look good, add a shadow. So the app is called Photo Room.

Bradley Sutton:

Photo Room. Yeah, all right. So you’re pretty much. You’re not outsourcing your photo shoots, you’re not outsourcing your editing of images, you’re handling everything yourself.

Sean Shan Fu:

That’s right, everything myself.

Bradley Sutton:

I love it.

Sean Shan Fu:

You know, one day, when I grow big enough, I’d love to get a team, but so far that’s. What I love about Amazon is that you can do everything yourself.

Bradley Sutton:

How long has e-commerce been your main income now, as opposed to like you know corporate when you got out of the corporate world?

Sean Shan Fu:

Oh, since 2021. Yeah,

Bradley Sutton:

2021. Now, what would you tell people who are coming from the corporate world or from a nine to five are the biggest things to keep in mind making that transition. You know, some of the things in my mind are like health insurance and the benefits you give up. But what are some other big shifts that people need to? It’s not just about hey, let me see what my gross revenue is and I’m going to pay all my bills. No, it’s obviously about profitability, but what are some other things that people should keep in mind before completely cutting the cord with corporate life?

Shan Shan:

I say don’t quit your job, because Amazon’s game this in 2024 is different than it was 10 years ago. It does take longer, you know. One of the things that takes longer is reviews. You have to get real reviews. Now you can’t just pay someone from India and overnight you have 200 reviews. That used to be fine, so now I have to get real reviews and that takes time because only two percent of people even leave reviews. So, um, so it may be years until you make enough money that you can like fully quit your job and lose your insurance and everything. Um, so I say don’t quit job. Stay as long as you can on the job. You won’t need, um, full-time hours anyways. In the beginning it’s a lot of waiting in the beginning, yeah, um, and then when you see the trend move where you can definitely a hundred percent pay yourself and that could be yours, um, then then you can quit your job and, on the way you know, find, find money saving tips, like the one I shared with you today about living for free in New York.

Bradley Sutton:

How, how, how did you find that, that hack or that uh? How were you introduced to that in the first place? Cause I I’m pretty sure there’s gotta be a story behind this, even.

Sean Shan Fu:

It’s just, a lot of my friends are like digital nomads, right. They love to travel, they don’t want to be stuck in one place. And one of my friends said hey, you got to try Kindred. It’s awesome and I tried it. I got in. It took about a month to get in. If you have to have a nice apartment, right, it’s just they do vet the apartment and they vet the people who join. And then once I got in, I’ve lived five months last year in New York, five months this in New York. I calculated that I probably saved about 50 grand in two years worth of rent that I didn’t have to pay because of this app.

Bradley Sutton:

So I think the story behind that is you got to network and so I know you particularly have been always about networking and meeting other founders of companies and sometimes, like Amazon sellers, we don’t think of ourselves, maybe as founders, like we think, oh, I got to have like a big startup software company and I’m a founder or a big corporation. No, if you have an Amazon business, you founded your Amazon business and brand. So talk a little bit about how, other than this, what kind of value you’ve gotten from putting yourself out there and networking as much as you do?

Shan Shan:

I love it. I think it’s so important. I just went to the Million Dollar Summit Club event and it was just a week ago in New York. I’d say, try to come out to them, I’d love to meet you and I’ve gotten so many helpful tips. For example, those placement fees I told you about they were killing me and I found out through another founder. There was this platform called Nemo ship where it kind of circumvented the placement fees. Now it only worked for a few months, but for those few months where it worked I saved a lot of money, like thousands. So that was just a tip that I would never found on my own if I didn’t chat with my fellow founder friends.

Bradley Sutton:

There’s a lot of different groups out there. There are local meetups that aren’t even just Amazon specific, that Eventbrite that people can look at, local meetups and things. And obviously here at Helium 10, we’ve got the Helium 10 Elite program, which only costs $99 a month and as a matter of fact, in next week I’m going to Milan, Italy, because we have a Helium 10 Elite meetup in group over there in Milan and there’s, you know, we just had one in Seattle. So much insight can be gained from just your, your, your network. You know it’s, it’s cliche, but, but your network, is your net worth, as, as people have long said, and you can share, you know, tips that you’ve learned with others, but then you’ll get more than that back.

Bradley Sutton:

You know, if you start networking and still remember my I owe my entire Amazon career to, to attending an event Um, before I was even like anything in the Amazon world, I went to an event back in 2016 and met people there that still are in my network even today, eight years ago. So it’s going to events like Shan Shan does and going into these groups and stuff is, I think, critical to success. What is your favorite Helium 10 tool, and if I were to give you keys to the product roadmap at Helium 10, like something that we don’t have now, that would make your life easier. What would it be? So two-part question there.

Sean Shan Fu:

Yeah, so if there’s one window that’s always open besides Amazon Seller Central, it would be Helium 10. I swear by Cerebro and Keyword Tracker. And now I’m using Profits a lot, because profits tell me the refund rate of a product.

Sean Shan Fu:

And I always make sure to check that it’s not more than 10%.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, because then that’s another fee that Amazon’s going to hit you with right.

Shan Shan:

Exactly yes, and it’s not like easy to get that number from Amazon. So love profits, love Cerebro, love keyword tracker. One thing I’ve been using it really hard for recently is when you’re selling clothing products that have all the sizes, colors. Things tend to go out of stock a lot, but that out of stock could be your best seller. And then because I only order small amounts because I’m very careful it goes out of stock and then you start losing rankings. So what I’ve done now is right before it goes out of stock, I go to Cerebro, I put in that ASIN and I just get a export Excel export from Helium 10, of all of the keyword rankings. It was at the peak and it goes out of stock. I usually try to restock it within a month. If it’s under a month, I’ve noticed you’ll get some of the rankings back. But it’s under a month, I’ve noticed you’ll get some of the rankings back.

Shan Shan:

But it’s not perfect right. So once I get some of the rankings back or maybe I don’t then I pull up that old Excel where I saw my rankings at the peak and I know that these keywords did well back when it was in stock and I would launch campaigns focused on those and not focus on just any keywords, because there’s buyer memory. If this product did well for snake tights, chances are a couple months later it still will do well for snake tights. But if it didn’t do well, if it was like number 50th position for Taylor Swift reputation outfit, then I wouldn’t shoot for that because I know at best I’ll just get to 50 again.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, makes sense, I like it best. So And then is there something else that you’ve like always wondered. Like, man, I wish Helium 10 did this, or something you have to actually pay another company to do. Uh, that we can make your life easier

Shan Shan:

Yeah, I mean I think you know ai has been so big this year. I would love healing 10. Just try to use ai more. Um, there may be keywords that are really good opportunities that I could shoot for and make campaigns if Helium 10 just told me about it. It’s so much data mining that an AI would do it better than I would. If it could somehow tell me the products that I lose sales to, because on Amazon someone will go to your page and then they may get distracted away from your page and buy snake tights from someone else.

I would love to know where they go. Things like that, like using AI features that aren’t quite clear yet. I hope one day it becomes real.

Bradley Sutton:

If people want to reach out to you on the webs out there, how can they find you?

Shan Shan:

You can feel free to email me at Shan S-H-A-N at millennialshops.com. You can also add me to LinkedIn, Shan Shan Fu, Millennials in Motion. Make sure you reference this podcast though, because I get so many invites I just kind of ignore them, but if they say, oh, I was watching Healing 10 podcast, then I’ll pay more attention to that.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us again. We definitely want to reach out. I’m going to be looking for your next LinkedIn post where you hit the $5 million mark or something like that, like your next, your next milestone, because you’ve been crushing it since you started, so it’s been great to watch your journey and wish you the most of success in the future.

Shan Shan:

Thanks Bradley, thanks everyone.

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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.
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