#630 – 9-Figure Amazon Seller + TikTok Shop Expert Strategies

Join us for a fascinating conversation as we welcome Ali Grey, a remarkable e-commerce expert and globetrotter, to our podcast. Ali shares his journey from London to living in Taiwan, after having worked from an impressive 70 different countries. Discover how he started his entrepreneurial journey at the young age of 15 by coding his own dropshipping website, which led him to leave school and pursue e-commerce full-time. Ali talks about his success on Amazon and his early investments in Bitcoin, which were driven by his interest in cryptography and a desire to break away from traditional financial systems.

In another exciting chapter, we explore Ali’s creative side as GRY, a DJ who transitioned from organizing underground raves in London to performing at major festivals around the world. He reveals the four key strategies that propelled his e-commerce business to impressive revenue growth, including acquiring ASINs, leveraging affiliate marketing, building a strong community, and creating patented products. Ali emphasizes the importance of community and patent financing while sharing his personal preference for social media platforms.

Finally, listen in as Bilal Sirbuland, a trailblazer in the TikTok Shop space, joins the discussion to share his journey from Amazon to becoming a top seller on TikTok Shop. Bilal highlights the simplicity and opportunities TikTok Shop offers, and shares strategies for launching and scaling a business, such as focusing on viral products and leveraging TikTok’s algorithm for advertising. This episode is packed with valuable insights and strategies from both Ali and Bilal, providing a comprehensive guide for aspiring e-commerce entrepreneurs looking to thrive in the ever-evolving digital selling marketplace.

In episode 630 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, Ali, and Bilal discuss:

• 00:00 – E-Commerce Experts Discuss Success Strategies
• 06:39 – Teen Entrepreneur’s Million-Dollar Gaming Venture
• 12:32 – From Raves to Festivals
• 17:43 – Value of Building Patents in Business
• 19:58 – Successful Transition to TikTok Shop
• 21:50 – Selling Brands on TikTok for Virality
• 26:27 – Selling Brands Without Influencers
• 32:47 – TikTok Shop Strategy and Pricing
• 39:52 – Selling Products on TikTok Shop

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today we’ve got a great two-in-one special where we have two guests for the price of one. One is one of the world’s top experts on TikTok shop and the other has sold hundreds of million dollars online and is even an accomplished DJ who plays at music festivals. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. 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 for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And continuing in the videos that I recorded while I was in Dubai, I got to meet up with a couple of friends who one of them, I’ve met in person in Pakistan before, and I had no idea who’s gonna be at this conference. I was like wait a minute, is that Bilal over there? And then the other one is somebody who I’ve known online for more time than I’ve even worked at Helium 10, probably over seven years and this was the first time I got to meet him in person. Both have very interesting stories and completely different strategies. One is going to be talking all about TikTok shop and the other one about how he has really leveled up over the years and probably well, at one point was on his way to being a 10-figure seller. And so, without further ado, let’s go ahead and take it away with Bilal and Ali Grey. Alright, finally, guys, I am here meeting somebody I have known online for I don’t know how many years, and we keep missing each other at conferences and stuff. But, Ali, it’s great to meet you here in person.

Ali Grey:

Nice to meet you. I think it’s like 10 years, man. It’s been a long time, so I’m happy to meet you.

Bradley Sutton:

I just now I’m finding out a little bit about your backstory, but let’s go ahead and, uh, talk about it. You were born and raised in London?

Ali Grey:

Yes, correct. I’m from a Turkish background, but I was born and raised in London.

Bradley Sutton:

I was just in um UK a couple weeks ago. I drove almost 1000 miles. Uh, in one week I went to, drove to Wales. I went, you know, Southampton. I was going to all of Stonehenge for the first time. It was great. But you haven’t lived in London in a while, right? When did you start living on the road, I guess?

Ali Grey:

Seven, eight years ago, I was done with London, and when you reach a certain tax bracket as well, your taxes are just putting money in the bin, right? So when you can, especially when your money can buy you more things in other countries, when you get more for your money, why wouldn’t you travel and explore? And I’ve done that in 70 countries. I worked from 70 countries and then I realized that’s not sustainable. I need to find a base and I fell in love with Taiwan and I started living in Taipei. And I haven’t looked back until last year where I realized I’ve done everything here, I’ve took all the energies, I’ve given all the energies, so I have to find a new place. Now I’m looking for a new base, but yeah, I’ve been living in Taiwan.

Bradley Sutton:

When did you get into e-commerce?

Ali Grey:

Uh, when I was very young. Uh, when I was around 15, I started a dropship website and there was no Shopify back then. So I coded my own little website to sell beanbags and I don’t know why I chose beanbags. I think I was just like copying someone and the shipping cost was more than the product itself because they’re huge, right. But I became just addicted to e-commerce ever since then. Then I’ve discovered Amazon and I dropped out of school.

Bradley Sutton:

When did you start selling on Amazon?

Ali Grey:

Like 2013, 14. I was like one of those people that got into it from amazing, like ASM, I think. I think before ASM, but I really thrived on ASM.

Bradley Sutton:

So you were going to University at the time.

Ali Grey:

Not even I dropped out before Uni.

Bradley Sutton:

So you were in like what we call high school in America.

Ali Grey:

Yeah, so we call it college. So there’s like 16 to 18 we call it college. You guys call college university, so I dropped out when I was 16. I was like I,

Bradley Sutton:

Because you were making a lot of money online already?

Ali Grey:

Yes, and also the things that I was being taught. I loved computing and IT and the things that I was being taught was incorrect, like my IT teacher was teaching incorrect things because he was not a tech guy, he was not a coder, and I was like he was very annoyed with me because I was like putting my hands up and I was correcting him and he was like, oh, yeah, you’re right. And then then I just when I went home, I thought, what am I doing here? I don’t think I belong in this environment where people are and I didn’t learn from people. I’m a self-teacher. There’s two types of people, right. Some people learn from other people and some people learn from themselves, and I just didn’t connect with anything they were saying.

Bradley Sutton:

So still when you were a teenager, Amazon became your main income.

Ali Grey:

E-commerce, not just Amazon. I used Amazon as a launchpad, but I was very quick to diversify away from Amazon. But, yeah, it was like 95% of my income. 5% was Bitcoin and I was, you know, I um like a tech guy, right, I was into cryptography and I was an anarchist, so I was very, like, anti-government, anti-establishment. And when Bitcoin white paper came out, I was at, I was on the forums uh, the cryptographic forums and I was reading it and it just blew my mind. And I wasn’t even doing it for investment. I bought it for the mission of controlling your own currency. When you have money in your bank account, the government can freeze your assets at any given time without a good reason. Bitcoin is freedom and I’m a nomad, right, I stand for freedom. So Bitcoin and Amazon became, you know, and then Bitcoin grew a large percentage and now Bitcoin makes me more money than all my businesses. Even I sold a lot of them. Bitcoin has just reached $100,000, man, and I’ve been in it for a very long time. And if you go down my Facebook, if you scroll all the way down, when it’s like $10, I’m typing on Facebook guys, buy Bitcoin. The post is still there, you can go check it and everyone is like scam, scam. No, it’s not a scam.

Bradley Sutton:

How old were you when you made your first million dollars online?

Ali Grey:

When I was 17. So I sold my first company when I was 17 on Flipper. Uh, Flipper, you know, they’re great people and they still exist. And um, I sold on flipper and it wasn’t. It wasn’t the amazon business, it was a gaming uh website called Zapxo.com and it’s a it’s, you know, Mini clip that you can go play flash games online. I was a very big gamer. I was addicted to world of warcraft when I was young, so all the time I wasn’t working I was just gaming and um, and I started my own gaming website and, surprisingly, as into e-commerce as I am, my first million was from the gaming website. There was a network of them. I built like 15 of them and I was doing CEO, but 17 and you know, I lost half of it in the first two years investing in tech and the other half I was smart enough, but a 17-year-old doesn’t know what to do. It wasn’t even a million, it was like 800,000 pounds, which is, I guess, in US dollars. It’s almost a million.

But I invested a lot of it in Bitcoin. The half that I didn’t lose it went into Bitcoin.

Bradley Sutton:

Wow, I don’t even want to calculate how much money that is now, because that’s going to be pretty impressive.

Ali Grey:

I didn’t keep all of it, but it’s still a considerable amount. 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. Now fast forwarding. You said one of your peak years online was during COVID. What was your peak sales in one year?

Ali Grey:

500 million and that’s what I lead my presentation with, but I just want everyone to know that’s not consistently 500 million every year. Obviously, that would be amazing, but we hit 500 million in sales across 19 different brands on Amazon and also DTC and retail, so it’s not just Amazon, right.

Bradley Sutton:

So is that a company that you had started before and just grew it little by little?

Ali Grey:

Yeah, I mean it was 19 brands and half of them have been acquired, so I acquired half of them and I talk about it during my presentation. Acquiring acquisition is very important to your growth, but I didn’t acquire companies. I didn’t do what the aggregators did Even though I think I was the first aggregator of sorts but I bought ASINs, so I would buy my second ranking competitor, I would buy my third ranking competitor and I would just buy that single ASIN. So you’re buying real estate on Amazon and I did this during my first year of starting Amazon and it was one of the biggest contributors of my growth just buying ASINs. I don’t buy houses, I buy ASINs.

Bradley Sutton:

I love it. I love it. So then, at that peak, how many employees does it full-time employees does it take to run a business with a GMV of 500 million?

Ali Grey:

We had 200 people across 19 brands. And talking about employees, the most important thing I did was keeping like, if I acquired a brand, I would keep the founder. I called them like mini-CEOs, so it would be me, and under me there’ll be 19 different mini-CEOs managing the brands and they would all share ideas. It was like a network effect brands and they would all share ideas. It was like a network effect and the systems. We had thousands of systems that were distributed to all of the 19 CEOs and then under them there was managers, so they would teach the systems to the managers and that that was the exact structure. Now, I didn’t learn the structure, I just figured it out and I thought it was the best thing to do. And the mini-CEOs all had equity in the company and that’s where the aggregators they screwed up. Right. They would buy a brand and they would fire all the team, right, and they would try to hire like bankers to manage the brands, because Fragile was made by a bunch of bankers from New York Degenerate bankers, by the way, not just any bankers. That’s why they were bankrupt. But I just knew the value of keeping the team in the brand.

Bradley Sutton:

At what point did you start DJing? Because that’s another thing. We kind of haven’t come, not that I DJ, but I have friends who DJ and I’m into the scene and stuff. When did you start djing? Because that’s another thing. We kind of haven’t come, not that I dj, but I have friends who dj and I’m into the scene and stuff. When did you start doing that?

Ali Grey:

Uh, so I I love music, right and I, I started off of music production and well, if we go way, way back, I started a party going to raves, uh, and just I looked at the DJs and I saw how they just conveyed their emotions into the crowd and they just controlled the emotions and the vibe and as a control freak, I was like I want to be that guy, I want to make people go on this journey. So then I started producing music Because I’ve researched, if you just stop DJing, no one really cares about you. You’re just a DJ at home. But if you produce music, then you have a following and a brand and I love brands, right. So I started producing. Then, when I had fans, some of the songs did really well, thanks to my marketing skills as well, because I marketed the songs to the right audience. I have millions of streams and now I can DJ and there’ll be people that come to my shows because they know who I am. This was all recent, like I released my first song three years ago, but I’ve you know, I’ve been in the music scene since I was 17. I would organize these squat raves. Do you know what they are? Squat raves? So in London it’s a culture. You have an SMS list of like 5,000 people, SMS marketing. When I was 17. We would collect numbers, we would break into a warehouse and we would um convert it. We would install the sound system as an abandoned warehouse, install a sound system and uh, everyone would get the location two hours before and there’ll be thousands of people there. And I got into this because I couldn’t enter clubs. I was 17, and I sold my company, so I was just having fun having a good time and I was like well, if I can’t go into clubs, I make my own club. And that’s how I fell in love with the scene of raving and festivals. And the police would arrive but they cannot break it up because we had thousands of people in this abandoned warehouse. The police were just like please leave by 6 am. We’re like done. So that was my intro.

Bradley Sutton:

Nice. Now what’s the biggest some festivals that you’ve played legitimately now where you’re not breaking into warehouses?

Ali Grey:

Yeah, I am not doing that anymore, but it was a respectable culture in London. Um, I’ve done earth fest in Taiwan. I’ve done EDC in Las Vegas. Um, I really want to do Coachella, so not yet, but I’m working on it.

Bradley Sutton:

Do you DJ under a name, or is it just your own name?

Ali Grey:

G-R-Y and I tattooed it. I tattooed it on my hand, and why? I’ll tell you why. I was a workaholic and one of the reasons why I became a DJ from the other things that I’ve told you is I needed a creative hobby. I was working 16, 17 hours a day, and business is a creative process, don’t get me wrong. But I just wanted to do something else. I wanted to be someone else sometimes. So I just created this alias you know, a night life alias, where I’m Ali Gray during the day, but when night arrives, I’m Grey, I’m G-R-O-I. And then I tattooed it on my hand because I wanted to remind myself there is more to life than just working all the time. So whenever I see my hand like make music. Music is your passion, your love, so focus more on music. Hand side tattoos. And also, it is cool, right.

Bradley Sutton:

I love it. Love it All right. So now you know. Successful e-commerce entrepreneur, successful DJ. Now you spoke at this event. Unfortunately, I was recording podcast in here so I couldn’t hear. What were you talking about? What were you training on?

Ali Grey:

So I was talking about the 20 most important hacks. I call them hacks, but they’re not hacks, right, I say hacks because everyone is into hacks, but, guys, there is no hacks in life. It’s still a long process. So it was 20 strategies that resulted in me growing to 500 million in revenue. So the topic title was 20 Hacks that Led To 500 Million In Revenue. It’s catchy, right.

Bradley Sutton:

I like it. I like it. Give me four of them.

Ali Grey:

That will take a while, but I’ll give you my first one, which is acquiring ASINs, buying out your competitors. The number two, number three, number four spots Number two is affiliates 10% of our revenue came from affiliates after 12 months of launching on Amazon. Number three would be community. Again, 5% of our revenue comes from our community. What do you mean by that? Building a Discord, a Reddit, a Facebook group, a WhatsApp group. So it’s a collective community built around your brand and people are excited to talk about it. And I didn’t know how effective this community was. I just launched it because I just wanted to talk to my customers. I wasn’t even thinking of making money from it. But, um, when we started serving our customers, um, we asked them you know, how did you, how did you find out about, about this brand? And they said my friend told me about it and we asked for the friend’s name. Then this was attribution, so we’re trying to attribute the friend. And they were in the Facebook group. They were in the Discord. Discord was a bit tough because they don’t use their real names, but Facebook they use their real names, right, and it resulted in 5% of our revenue and 5% of 500 million. It’s a lot. So the power of community is huge and you know entrepreneurs are often lonely. So if you build a community, you can talk to your customers, you can belong and then the customers can belong to your brand. Another hack was building patents. I think a lot of people don’t understand the value of building, engineering your products. They like private label. I no longer like we stopped doing private label at all, because, well, a factory can just come into the market and just screw you over the pricing, and it’s a come into the market and just screw you over the pricing and it’s a downhill if you’re private label. So we just built so many patents. Just make small changes to the products. Not only now, it’s unique. Now you have a patent that you can finance from. There is a thing called patent financing. So if your patent belongs to a product that does 20 million a year, you can get debt on that for very cheap using patent as collateral, and this is something no one is talking about or doing. So that’s a great hack. But if you guys want to get the whole presentation, you can email me and I’ll send it to anyone who wants it.

Bradley Sutton:

That’s awesome. I think I might have to email you to get that presentation, since I missed it. All right, how can people find you on the interwebs, either musically or just in general? LinkedIn when are you active?

Ali Grey:

You can put it in the comments my Instagram I don’t use LinkedIn. I just don’t like LinkedIn. I don’t like people waking up and posting their morning routine and pretending to be entrepreneurs.

Bradley Sutton:

And then saying if you want more information, say me in the comments.

Ali Grey:

Yeah, literally. I hate that. So I’m like anti-social media. But I do have Instagram because I need it for music, right? So my Instagram is sounds by G-R-Y. Sounds by G-R-Y and you can put it in the comments. And I use Facebook too, because my mom is on there and that’s how I talk to my mom. So, Ali Grey A-L-I space G-R-Y on Facebook. You can add me on Facebook If you’re old, then you use it like me. And WhatsApp number I’m not going to give it to you.

Bradley Sutton:

Alright. Well, it was great to uh finally meet you in person and look forward to hopefully seeing you at one of these conferences uh next year.

Ali Grey:

Thank you so much for having me all right.

Bradley Sutton:

Next up we’ve got a guest here, Bilal, who I actually met originally in Lahore, Pakistan. It was one of my first and second, I think, trips, uh over there, and in those days you were heavy into the Amazon world. But now you’ve kind of like migrated to be talking a lot about TikTok shop, right.

Bilal Sirbuland:

Yeah, that’s right. Nice to have you here. Thank you, Bradley

Bradley Sutton:

So why you told me that I think you were one of the first ones to start TikTok shop when it was first launched in the UK, right.

Bilal Sirbuland:

Yeah, I was among the top sellers and the first ones in the UK, and now we have expanded to US as well. So I’ve been doing Amazon for quite some time, but now I’ve completely shifted to TikTok shop, as we were speaking earlier.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, so when you started on TikTok shop in the UK, that was like around was that 2023? When that started, 2022. 2022. So then how did you start? Was it taking the products you were selling in Amazon UK and then just cross listening to TikTok shop in UK?

Bilal Sirbuland:

No, it’s a totally different platform. So there’s a working behind it and we selected some couple of products which related to brand and the best thing about TikTok still is that we were talking about that brands don’t sell themselves right now, because if we talk about any brand and we must say that 99.9% of the brands are already listed on Amazon, but it’s the other way around for TikTok. So when I just listed, it was like I didn’t know anything about TikTok shop and I just, you know, made I was just going through the Seller Central process and it was as easy as making a Gmail account. So when I ended up making a shop, I was like, what should I list? So there was a viral, you know brand, beauty brand. That was viral at that time. So I just listed a product and I start getting orders and I did not know that, from where I’m going to source it even. But the way the orders start pouring in, it was quarter four, high season, and it was something I had never seen before. So you have also experienced the same, you know you were telling me. So I just listed uh, you know several brands and that was the start of my journey. And then later, uh, you know I turned into the uh, you know private label products and from China sourcing and things like that. But still there’s a lot of room because you can sell brands first. You know, as per TikTok policy, if the brand itself is not selling, then you, me, anyone can sell that brand. And you know, TikTok is all about going viral, so you have to find the viral products. As long as you have good sourcing, you can, you know, talk to brands and you can get the stock. You know it’s all good for you.

Bradley Sutton:

So then, it’s not just about you having your own product on amazon and migrating to TikTok shop which you probably should but even somebody who’s not selling. Let’s talk about that, because I don’t think a lot of people talk about that where, um, I don’t sell on Amazon necessarily, or maybe I do, but I actually start on TikTok shop with a product that I am not selling on Amazon, regardless of the reason of why I’m not selling Maybe I don’t have an Amazon account or I’m just not selling it. How can I sell on TikTok shop when I don’t even have a product? Cause, maybe this is the kind of model for somebody who’s just starting out, who doesn’t have a lot to invest. How do they get started ?

Bilal Sirbuland:

Yes, that’s the best thing about TikTok shop, because you don’t need that much planning. You can start right away. Because on Amazon, I mean, you cannot just list products and start selling brands. Don’t let you do that, because it’s a mature market now and they don’t let you do that. So for private label, you need a lot of investments and then you have to do ranking and then PPC and things like that.

But on TikTok shop, you know, uh, some, something or the other, it is viral on all categories. You know, things are viral. Now I have to see what is selling. Now people think that we should start selling what we have. Uh, you know, sourcing available, but that’s not the right thing. You have to sell whatever is selling, okay, so, uh, just imagine that. Uh, just, you know, I’m a new seller, okay, I have no experience of Amazon whatsoever and I have just made a new account, okay, so now what would I do? I will start listing the brands. The only thing I have to say is that brand should not be selling itself. Okay, and you are officially allowed from TikTok that you can sell anything as long as the brand itself is not selling. So it is as simple as that. So you don’t need any marketing, you don’t need any brand approvals, you don’t need any inventory, big inventories. You just you can start for as low as 500 pounds, 1000 pounds, but it depends when you have to scale, then you need a lot of it.

Bradley Sutton:

Let’s say I’m selling you a TikTok shop US. I just do a random search and I see that there’s a popular collagen peptide or something that nobody is, that that particular brand, like Vital Proteins, is a very famous brand. Vital Proteins itself is not selling in TikTok shop. Now is the first step trying to get to make sure I can source it. Shop now is the first step trying to get to make sure I can source it. Or are you saying, hey, just list it at a price where even I can just buy it retail kind of like almost like arbitrage way? Or is the first step I need to have a supplier, a verified supplier, where I can fulfill the orders?

Bilal Sirbuland:

Look, it depends the testing is. Must you know? Without testing you go to the supplier. You will do all that hassle that will be wasted. So I recommend my students that look, list the product To be on the safer side. Like I was in the US from the last two months, some of my students were really reluctant. And what should I do? Where should we start? So I said, okay, let’s go to Costco. We went to Costco and just imagine we entered there and I just started telling them, ok, list this, list this, this, this. And by midnight I mean they had so many orders they went to Costco and they started fulfilling it.

Bradley Sutton:

How did they get the orders without having like influencers show video?

Bilal Sirbuland:

Yes, that’s the best part about it, that you can sell brands. If your price is good, you can sell it easily. So at the first point, you don’t have influencers on board, so you don’t need them. It’s the same way like amazon people will search that brand. That brand is being searched already. You don’t have to, you know, worry about that. If your price is just one penny less, you can sell really well, so the orders start coming right away. If you are selling a good brand, you know I have this product available at Costco, you don’t have to worry about it. Or even if you want to buy, you know you can return it later, so it doesn’t cost you anything to test the product. Once you have tested the product now, you should talk to a brand. Or if you don’t need any approval, you just want to make sure that you have enough stock available. The only problem is that when the influencers one thing is that there’s target collaboration, we will give sample to influencers. The other thing is that whatever we have listed on our store, there’s an open collaboration the influencer will add that product to his or her showcase without letting you know. So if that video goes viral, you haven’t given any sample. You have done anything. But if that video goes viral, the product you know starts selling. So I was selling a product few months ago and I was like I started getting orders, you know, from everywhere in the UK. I mean from every part of the UK. They just started right away. So when I checked that product, 1700 influencers were selling that product without even asking me. They just go to your store and they just click one button add to showcase all products in their showcase and they start selling. So at that time, you know, it gets really difficult to fulfill those orders.

Bradley Sutton:

Interesting, interesting. Now to date from between UK and US. How much sales have you generated on TikTok shop?

Bilal Sirbuland:

Yes, I am about to reach almost a million pound in UK and almost 300,000 in US dollars.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, of that amount, how much are like your own private label products you know that maybe you were selling on other marketplaces or how much is kind of like I guess you can almost call this like wholesale, where you’re buying existing brands.

Bilal Sirbuland:

Yes, because I have switched to my own products, like you can say eight or nine months ago, and you can say that 30% of the revenue is coming from my own product because I was selling brands initially. So the major revenue is coming from the brands and now I have a couple of brand approvals as well. So that is a different thing, because the best part is that you can make five shops on one company, on one LLC. It is allowed by TikTok that you can make five different shops, different niches. They don’t have to do anything with each other. Separate shops under one business. So that’s the best part. So you can make one for beauty, you can make one for pet supplies, one for home and kitchen, so that’s the best part. So you can make one for beauty, you can make one for pet supplies, one for home and kitchen.

Bradley Sutton:

So you can do that and the login is the same, or it’s all separate login?

Bilal Sirbuland:

Just a different email. That’s it.

Bradley Sutton:

Alright, now go ahead. I mean, this is actually a little bit fascinating to me because I want to rewind a little bit, because I’m still trying to wrap my head around this fact that you can just sell even like Costco stuff. So obviously you don’t want to burn anybody’s bridge here for exposing their product, but is there anybody or any product you can think of where you can walk through an example where, hey, somebody found this here Costco grocery store online, whatever they started selling at this price, this is what was happening. Then they went to get a supplier. Can you walk me through a real scenario, just so I can kind of wrap my head a little bit more around this?

Bilal Sirbuland:

Just to give you an example, one of my students in Houston, you know we went to the Costco and you know there was a maybe you know that it’s a Fairlife that protein shake, so it was like pack of 12. So he was like sir, please I don’t understand what to list what? And we just, you know, I just said okay, take this and list, and within next one hour he had so many sales. It’s just that.

Bradley Sutton:

What did he list? The whole 12 pack or like individual?

Bilal Sirbuland:

Yes 12 pack?

Bradley Sutton:

How were people finding his product?

Bilal Sirbuland:

Yes, they are now searching with keywords as well. That is the main thing, because the price they are getting on TikTok not that on all products, but the price for the Chinese products or the generic products the prices are so low that now people have started searching on TikTok shop. So that’s the other part of this marketplace and the main core thing is that. You know, now I tell people that stop finding products, start finding videos. You know, just scroll and any product which clicks you, you know. You see, uh, the problem is when we see that, okay, now we have uncle, he has a toy. You know towel factory in Pakistan. I want to sell that. No, that’s not the right thing. You have to search a good video. You have to search what is selling best. You, you talked about it, you know, yesterday. So, whatever is selling, we are going to source it, because sourcing is no big deal in 2024. You can just do it on Alibaba in just a few clicks. So, whatever is selling, we should start selling. And the main thing I would love to communicate is that the trend starts from US. You know, whenever I’m selling in UK, I exactly know that now, look, this product is being viral in US exactly after four or five months is going to be viral in UK, then this viral thing will go to the Europe and then after three, four months it will come to middle east and then Parkinson and the subcontinent. So I don’t, if I have to sell in uk, I check amazon, best sellers in the us, not UK. You know and I exactly know that. Okay, if I’m prepared for this, you know it is going to come. So you have to forecast and that’s the next level. But the thing you were asking, that from where we should start? Just make a shop, start your listing, test the product and then source inventory in bulk and then in US, UK, we have now warehousing available. That is, FBT fulfillment by TikTok. They give you the same express tag before 10 pm. 10 pm is cut off time. If you, you know, have order before that, it will be shipped very next day. Same like FBA.

Bradley Sutton:

Going back to your Costco example of 12 pack of protein. Let’s say the 12 pack of protein shakes is $20 at Costco. What do I list it for? On TikTok shop.

Bilal Sirbuland:

Yeah, then you have to search. The best thing is, when you open TikTok shop, there’s a search bar and there’s a camera button right there on TikTok shop app. You just click that and you just take picture. You have, you are in Costco, you just take that picture, all you know. Listings will come in front of you and you will, you know, get to know that how much it is selling for you can.

Bradley Sutton:

So you’re saying that other people could be already selling that.

Bilal Sirbuland:

That’s what selling yes, they are actually selling and you can see. Okay, look, you know 10 sellers are selling it for 22.99. One is selling for 24.99. You just, you know, have to be on the lower side because it’s a brand. Once you know, the best thing is that you keep the prices lower in the in the beginning. And then you know, let’s suppose you have sold thousand units. Okay, now you increase your price like two dollars. Okay, now the buyer doesn’t know that you have been selling it for twenty dollars. You know, now your price is, let’s suppose, 22.99. So the buyer thinks that you have sold all thousand units in 22.99. And because on TikTok all data is visible, it’s so accurate, so accurate that if you open you know app and you open my store and you see that I have sold 10 000 units. The moment I’ve experienced it actually myself the moment I have got one more order in my store, you will see 10 000 one.

Bradley Sutton:

So but then if I, if I was offering her at 20, am I in this, in this initial thing? Am I trying to make a profit or I’m just trying to test the market? So do I have to like, for example, Helium 10,? We actually now have a TikTok shop profitability calculator in our Chrome extension. So you go to an Amazon listing and you hit TikTok shop. It’ll show the fees and they’re 8% or whatever. Is the commission that allows you to put? Whatever? Do I need to use that to make sure I’m profitable? Or the first initial orders of this protein shake? It’s not about making profit, it’s just about testing the market.

Bilal Sirbuland:

Yeah, it should be about testing the market. I tell my students that don’t go for profit now, but at times you are just surprised that the way you are getting margins, you can get very good profit as well.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, so I’m building now. I do protein shakes, I do all these things. I maybe have 100, 200, whatever 300 orders. Now maybe I’m just breaking even because I’m just trying to hit those metrics. But now what is my first step to actually trying to make profit now on TikTok shop? Once I’ve built up my store and now I have experience.

Bilal Sirbuland:

Okay, yeah, now we have two options. Okay, let’s suppose that, okay, you have started selling that fair life protein. Okay, now you have sold 5,000 units. Let’s suppose, okay, now you can confidently go to the brand and you can tell them your figures. Look, we have sold 5,000 units. This is our shop. Why don’t you sell? Maybe they are not interested, but for TikTok they will not take a moment to tell you that. Okay, you can list and that is the moment when you can do the brand. You know authorization, and then the other sellers are gone the moment you. So we have two options either the brand itself is coming or you got the authorization letter, so you start selling those for your life onwards. And the other part is that you do the proper product hunting and then you make your inventory from China and you start selling. But the only thing you need to focus is that you have enough videos available even before that launch of product, because what we will do? We cannot get the influences on board on that product right now. So what we do? We take a good video and we start advertising. And right, because you don’t have much followers. So when you do 30, 40 day, TikTok will bring your video to 100,000 new people. So then you will start getting sales and if like, for seven days, if you’re running that ad and you have like 20, 3040 sales, it’s a good product and you can, you know, order your inventory from Alibaba. So that’s how it is.

Bradley Sutton:

How much should I? Is that advertising only in the beginning, or is you know, on Amazon? Obviously PPC never ends. You’re always advertising. Is that how it is, you know? Should I dedicate a portion of my budget to advertising, or just in the initial to get traction, but the rest of it is influencer marketing?

Bilal Sirbuland:

You have to try both. The combination is very good because I have made an ad scores, TikTok ad scores, and there we have done everything live and our CPA is as low as 0.87 pounds per conversion. So this is really good because if I, if I go to influencer, I have to give them maybe 10 20. So you have to see it depends from product. Product at Advertisement is the best thing because it’s very quick, you don’t have to give any sample, then make videos, then you don’t have any idea it goes viral or not. So if you are paying TikTok, their algorithm is so good, it’s very advanced and it takes like six, seven, eight days to optimize and find the right audience. Because six, seven, eight days to optimize and, you know, find the right audience, because you don’t have to do anything, just run ads, everything broad, don’t select anything, no audience, nothing, and it will bring you the sales way next day. But then you have to see what is your conversion price. If the conversion is, you know, going low by each passing day, it’s a good product and you must continue.

Bradley Sutton:

Now I know, um, you know you cannot drop ship anymore from Amazon to Walmart, Walmart to Amazon they don’t like each other’s fulfillment and things like that. Can you drop ship from Amazon and Walmart retail like online arbitrage to TikTok shop?

Bilal Sirbuland:

No, not now. And, like I, I think it was okay till April this year and they were even accepting the tracking. You just send directly to the customer and you just put tracking and it gets updated. But now because since TikTok has grown and now they don’t accept it, so you have to bring from and we do it. We bring that from Amazon Prime, we buy the products, we, you know, get that inventory into our warehouse and then we ship it to the customer because otherwise we need a valid tracking. So direct drop shipping is not allowed.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, yeah, I used to do something like that. We called it like two-step drop shipping.

Bilal Sirbuland:

That’s what it is, yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, so that’s interesting. Now, but then I guess the process could be similar as I’m thinking this through. Maybe there’s a popular product on Amazon. It’s not on TikTok shop, like you said, if that brand is not selling itself, I can do it. So I could just order 10 or 15, 20, even 50 units and then show the sales to that brand and say, hey, let me, you know, can I buy in bulk because I’m selling this on TikTok shop? Is that something you teach.

Bilal Sirbuland:

Exactly. That’s the way to go, because you have so many brands you know in front of your eyes on Amazon every day and you will see that 99% of them doesn’t sell on TikTok. Even you know people like me who are selling. They haven’t listed that product. So if you don’t see any sales, that does not mean it’s not selling. No one has listed that product. So if you and you can talk to any brand and tell them, look, I want to sell your product on TikTok shop, they will say, let’s do. But if you talk to them I want to sell on Amazon, they will never agree to it. That’s the main difference, because it’s a win-win for them.

Bradley Sutton:

How can people find you on the interwebs out there, like your YouTube, or to contact you if they want to get more information?

Bilal Sirbuland:

Yeah, they can find me on YouTube. They can write Bilal Sirbuland B-I-L-A-L-S-I-R-B-U-L-A-N-D, or they can write TikTok Shop UK. TikTok Shop USA. My Facebook profile is the same with Bilal Sirbulan, so they can find me there. My website is BilalSirbulan.com. They can find me there and I really, you know, want to give this message to everyone that you must start. This is the time. This is a new marketplace. You know, Bradley, you know it better that you know someone who started Amazon in. You know, uh, Bradley, you know it better. That you know someone who started amazon in, you know, 15 years ago. You know, and the one who is thinking to start now. There’s no comparison. So same is the case with TikTok shop. Whosoever will start now. You know they are going to be big and the best thing is that a very few people know about it. That’s what I was telling you, that I was in the US. If I met 100 people, 99 of them doesn’t know anything about TikTok shop and they are at the back of their mind. They think that only Chinese can sell. So that’s the main thing we need to give more awareness to people, because very few marketplaces has this potential, because they have 2 billion active users in the world, and that’s a lot of traffic.

Bradley Sutton:

Alright. Last 30, second strategy having to do a TikTok shop of the day.

Bilal Sirbuland:

I think the best thing is to start. I mean I really want to motivate people. I’ve been traveling a lot and just to motivate people that you know there’s a mistrust, you know they think that you know people are selling courses or they are trying to sell. You know their YouTube stuff and things like that. But to tell you honestly, I mean this is the best opportunity to avail right now.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome.

Bilal Sirbuland:

I really want you to start and just let me know that what is the sales progress? And then we will do another podcast with your sales.

Bradley Sutton:

Alright, we’re going to do that. I already have my TikTok shop started, but I didn’t start selling too much yet, so I’ll do that, and then next time we bring him on, we’ll see what’s new with TikTok shop and also let’s see how my sales have been. So, Bilal, thank you so much. It’s great to see you here in Dubai. Hope to see you somewhere else soon.

Bilal Sirbuland:

Thank you so much, man it was so wonderful and great event it was. Hope to see with Valdef Istanbul as well in May 2024.

Bradley Sutton:

Sounds good. We’ll see you later.

Bilal Sirbuland:

Thank you, thank you.

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