#137 – In 12 Months this Amazon FBA Seller Increased Her Sales from 200K to 2,000,000 Using PPC and Other Strategies

Today’s guest left her job as a full-time office assistant and now has 10,000 Facebook followers, and 15,000 on YouTube. She made her first 2 million on Amazon in three years but she’s prouder of the fact that one of her own students just did the same thing in 17 months. 

In this episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Helium 10’s Director of Training and Customer Success, Bradley Sutton welcomes Tamara Tee, who’s here to talk about PPC strategies, her lighting secrets for video and how quarantine has helped her focus her energies on eCommerce.

In episode 137 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Tamara discuss:

• 01:05 – Tamara’s Origin Story
• 02:45 – A Two Million Dollar Partnership
• 05:55 – Big Social Media Gains
• 07:00 – For an Amazon Coach, the Only Thing Better Than Success is a Student’s Success
• 09:15 – A Possible Upside to Quarantine
• 11:50 – Testing the Market with Small Batches
• 14:15 – What’s Her PPC Strategy?
• 16:30 – A Full-Day PPC Budget is Key
• 20:00 – How Tamara Lowers Her ACoS
• 22:50 – Growing a Big YouTube Channel
• 25:00 – “Natural” Lighting Secrets for Video Blogging
• 26:30 – iPhone Video for the Win
• 31:00 – Big House = Increased Productivity
• 35:44 – Tamara’s 30 Second Tip 
• 36:39 – How to Reach Out to Tamara

Enjoy this episode? Be sure to check out our previous episodes for even more content to propel you to Amazon FBA Seller success! And don’t forget to “Like” our Facebook page and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you listen to our podcast.

Want to absolutely start crushing it on Amazon? Here are few carefully curated resources to get you started:

• Freedom Ticket: Taught by Amazon thought leader Kevin King, get A-Z Amazon strategies and techniques for establishing and solidifying your business.
• Ultimate Resource Guide: Discover the best tools and services to help you dominate on Amazon.
• Helium 10: 20+ software tools to boost your entire sales pipeline from product research to customer communication and Amazon refund automation. Make running a successful Amazon 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. 
• SellerTradmarks.com: Trademarks are vital for protecting your Amazon brand from hijackers, and sellertrademarks.com provides a streamlined process for helping you get one.

Transcript

Bradley: Today, we’re going to hear from a former guest from last year who’s now come back. Happy to report that she’s sold over a million dollars on Amazon, has hit 15,000 subscribers on YouTube, bought the house of her dreams, and more. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

Bradley: 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 a serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. We’ve got a serious seller coming all the way to us from Canada today. Tamara, how’s it going?

Tamara: Hey, Bradley. I’m doing awesome. How are you?

Bradley: I’m doing just delightful. It’s great to have you back. Now, it’s been a year since you came on the podcast originally; we went a little bit into your history on that first episode, but just in case we have some new listeners, you, before Amazon, were in the accounting world, right?

Tamara: Yes. I was an office assistant for multiple accounting firms for 10 whole years, nine to five.

Bradley: And what initially made you want to get out of that and get into something else, namely, Amazon.

Tamara: You know what? I knew, at a very young age, I did not want to work for anybody. I always wanted to take on entrepreneurship. I just did not know what to do, and then, it’s so funny because I heard about Amazon FBA from some guy on a dating website, because he did that full time. I did my research on YouTube, and then, it was such a great opportunity. I hopped on it in 2017.

Bradley: That’s awesome. Now, I remember last year, in the beginning of the year, we talked about your 2018 sales, and you were stoked that you had around $200,000 of gross sales. Now that we’re in 2020, looking back at 2019, I’m just going to go out on a limb and say you probably did a little bit better than $200,000 in in 2019. Would I be correct in saying that?

Tamara: Yes. We also opened up multiple Amazon stores in the US now; online stores of course. And the reason why we did that is because, first, I brought on a business partner. I believe the last time we talked, it was just me, myself¾I was solo¾but I decided to partner up with someone, because everything’s just growing, and he was really, really smart in using Amazon PPC Sponsored Ads, and then, I was really good at other areas. That worked out, and now we just passed the $2 million mark.

Bradley: Wow, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. Now, what profit margins are you getting from that after PPC?

Tamara: We push PPC a lot. For those of you who are new to selling on Amazon, PPC is pay per click. Basically, we are really big on using Amazon Advertising, PPC to launch all of our products. We do everything 100% organically. We do not do anything black hat or cheat the system. With that being said, after PPC, our profit margins are anywhere between 21 to 26%.

Bradley: Okay. That’s pretty good. Now, since you have a partner, do you split the profits with him then?

Tamara: We do, yes.

Bradley: Okay. All right. Even though you’re splitting with somebody, what you’re taking home from Amazon is a lot more than it was in 2018 when you were just by herself?

Tamara: Yes.

Bradley: Yeah, I’ve been looking at that. You’ve been doing so well; you’ve been doing some house shopping, haven’t you?

Tamara: Yes, I just bought a $2 million house.

Bradley: Whoa. Very nice. Have you moved into it yet?

Tamara: No, we’re moving in June. No, not June, May 2020, and we literally closed the deal, I think it was only a week ago, but it’s a seven-bed, seven-bath, 4,700 square feet.

Bradley: Oh, my goodness. Now, where are you at again? Are you in Vancouver?

Tamara: Yeah, thank you.

Bradley: Okay. Wow. Well, what view do you have?

Tamara: It’s not by the water or anything. It’s more based so that when you look outside, it’s more nature, and it’s a lot more quiet than where I am right now. Right now, I’m very close to the downtown. This is outside of the downtown core, so a lot more quieter.

Bradley: Cool. Cool. Now, 10 years ago, maybe when you were two years into accounting, what was your living situation? Did you live in your own apartment or did you have a $2 million house? Where were you living?

Tamara: Just to back up, well, first, I never thought I would even be starting my own online business selling products on Amazon, because after working nine to five for so many years, I was just stuck in that mindset. But I just had it working with people because I don’t feel like there’s stability a lot of the time. And I have a very hard time following rules sometimes. But I lived with my family until I was I think 22, and then, I moved out into an apartment, and then, I bought my very first home, and then, I moved out of there. I sold my place, and then, now my spouse and I, we live in downtown Vancouver in an apartment, and now we’ve got our home.

Bradley: That’s awesome. That’s awesome: to go from living at home to 10 years later, and now, you’ve got a $2 million house. Obviously, thanks to selling on Amazon. Now, another thing we talked about last time you were on the show was that you were building up your Facebook group and your YouTube community. And now, in those days, if I recall, you had only about 4,000 members in your Facebook group and about 4,000 subscribers on your YouTube channel. How have you been able to grow those as well?

Tamara: Yes, we are over 10,000 members right now in my Facebook, the public community, and my YouTube channel is at about 15,000 subscribers.

Bradley: That’s so cool. I see you a lot more out there, and people know you and it’s just a really good feeling to be able to help people. I know you do a course, and yes, isn’t that the best feeling, somebody buys your course, that’s great. You get money and of course you like money. I’m just assuming I’m going to go out on a limb, because I think you’re a similar to me. But when you see one of your students succeed on Amazon, they’re changing their life, isn’t that probably even more valuable than the feeling that you get from getting the money, right?

Tamara: 1000%, and I actually have students that are doing way better than me.

Bradley: Good, good. Give me an example. You don’t have to mention their name or what they do, but can you give us an example of that?

Tamara: Yeah, of course. We just passed $2 million, but we started in 2017. It took me three years. Our student, it took her one year and five months to hit her $2 million mark. She doubled her speed and her success was twice as fast as mine. And to me, that’s amazing because I actually have this story, her name is Katherine, and her success story is on my YouTube channel if anybody wants to check it out. But she was able to work from home and her husband was also able to quit his job, and they have a daughter that they live with, so she’s working from home now.

Bradley: Wow. Oh, so what did she do before that?

Tamara: She always had a few side businesses. I did not ask much, but she wasn’t someone who worked nine to five. I think she worked straight from her own home as well. But she said she never had that much success until she started selling on Amazon, and it only took two products.

Bradley: Cool. Now, last year, I remember you living in Canada, I had to ask you if you sold in Canada, and you’re only selling in Amazon USA? Is that still the case or have you expanded to any other marketplaces?

Tamara: Still true, because my business partner is actually from Boston, so it’s actually a huge advantage for me to sell in the US, because he can help with a lot of logistics and things. And we actually have a small little warehouse as well in the US, so it’s actually a huge advantage to sell in the US and not in Canada, but that’s just my scenario.

Bradley: Cool. Cool. Another thing I wanted to follow up on was your time dedication or time constraints from running your Amazon business, from running your coaching business, and then doing the social media stuff like the Facebook group and making YouTube videos. I actually forgot what you had said last year, but I remember, there’s like 50% one thing and 25% and other, but can you break that down? How many hours a week you’re spending on each?

Tamara: You know what, it really depends, because you come across a lot of sellers. It really depends on what the workload is for that specific area. Right now, we are in the last week of March in 2020, and now we have all the time in the world, because everyone’s quarantined at home. I actually find that I am much more productive now, and I can work a lot of more hours whereas compared to before where I was constantly getting distracted with going out to dinner, hanging out with friends. Back then, I didn’t work as much as now, I feel, but it’s all over the place. I would say what I like to do is focus on one thing a day. If today I want to update my course and only focused on coaching, I will do that eight hours today, and then tomorrow, we may go back to PPC advertising and optimizing all the campaigns. I’m going to focus on Amazon the whole day. That’s how I like to break it down.

Bradley: Okay, cool. Cool. Now, I remember last year you had said that one of the motivations for making more money on Amazon is one of your passions, which is you love to travel. Has your Amazon business helped you travel any cool places in the last year?

Tamara: Yes. We went to Canada; we traveled to Maui; we traveled to Arizona; we went to San Francisco; we went to LA. We just got back from Mexico and Cancun. I think we traveled about every two months.

Bradley: Love it. Well, what’s your favorite place so far?

Tamara: I honestly, well, love tropical beaches. I just love the hot weather, because we don’t get it much here in Vancouver. I really love the all-inclusive resorts in Mexico.

Bradley: How do you not gain 10 pounds when you go there though because that’s what happens to me whenever I go to those all-inclusive because I eat to my heart’s content.

Tamara: Yeah. I have a morning ritual, by the way. Throughout my whole Amazon journey and ever since I started entrepreneurship, I told myself that I will still have a morning ritual where I do things that I love, even when we are traveling. I also went to New York anyway. Even when we are traveling, we make sure that we work out every other day. It’s just a commitment we made to ourselves, myself and my spouse. It just makes me feel better and more energized and more happy about life.

Bradley: Cool. Love it. Now, let’s talk to some specific strategy now. You mentioned that you’re launching strategy is PPC. How many products did you launch in the last year, more or less with that strategy?

Tamara: We’re always launching products. Now, my situation may be different from a lot of newer sellers, because right now, since we have over 20 products, there’s a lot of products that we test in and out. When I say test, I mean we always bring in small batches to test the market to see how the PPC is. For us, our main goal is to get a lower ACoS. Again, that’s just our business. I’m not suggesting it to anybody else. But we have about five products right now that really take the lead, that make up most of the $2 million that we have made in sales. And then, the rest are just doing okay. They’re not doing super crazy numbers, but we keep them there, because our focus is to build a brand around products.

Bradley: Okay. All right. That’s cool. Thinking back to a couple of these launches that you have done, what was your strategy? If you’re not using rebates, or if you’re not doing a many chat, or if you’re not doing a giveaway services, you don’t have to give your secret recipe completely, but in general, what’s some tips that you can give up on what worked for you?

Tamara: I’ve mentioned this a lot of time on my YouTube channel. I cannot stress enough for any seller, every single seller, when you have a product that just hit the warehouse, and it’s active inventory, if your inventory is active, it’s time to turn on automatic PPC even if you have zero reviews. And the reason why I really stress this is because we need the organic keyword data to see what type of keywords customers are searching, what type of keywords make sense for our products. And we need enough data from the automatic campaign to build our manual campaigns. And the manual campaign, I feel is like where the launch actually happens. But without automatic data, it’s really hard nowadays to pinpoint which keywords are the best which have converted that will give you that nice low ACoS when you do launch your manual campaigns.

Bradley: Okay, cool. We talked about that, and I was just on in one of your YouTube videos talking about our PPC tool and how you can put different thresholds on what is too much spend and what’s too little spend and things like that. What are some of your guidelines as far as when to make a keyword negative or what’s your ACoS goal or what makes you move something from an auto-campaign to a manual campaign, things like that.

Tamara: Sure. That’s a really good question. I did a whole YouTube video about this topic as well, and we have something my business partner actually taught me a lot about PPC. PPC was something that I was not very good at when I first started, and he jumped in and taught me the whole picture. And now, we’re really good at optimizing and everything with PPC, but we have something called the 10-click rule. Let’s say you are selling a beach ball, you have a beach ball, and let’s say customer searches up summer beach ball, and they made that click 10 times on your product listing, but you did not get a sale. It’s time to put it into the negative, because you don’t want to keep having that keyword run and eating up a lot of your costs. Obviously, we all have a daily budget, but our rule is if you spend more than $10, or if you have more than 10 clicks, eight to 10 clicks on a keyword, and it does not work, it’s time to put it into the negative exact or phrase depending on if you want to negative exact or phrase it.

Bradley: Okay, cool. What other tips about PPC do you think that you know from your videos is unique to what you’re teaching as opposed to what might be the mainstream that’s out there?

Tamara: When anybody, I don’t care who it is, first start running PPC, your ACoS is going to be high. Now it’s high, not because your strategy sucks, but it’s because your product is so new to Amazon that they may not recognize your keywords yet and they don’t know which ones work, which ones don’t. One tip I can really give for this is to keep on running your PPC, and we need money to obviously launch your products, but you really should be having a full-day budget for your automatic campaigns for at least 30 days. Run your automatic campaign, right when your inventory hits the warehouse; when it’s active, run it for at least 30 days on a full-day budget.

Bradley: What do you mean by full-day budget?

Tamara: Oh, full-day budget. Sometimes if you put down, let’s say, 20 bucks and depending on what type of product you have and how high of a demand it is, your budget might run out like at 3:00 PM and you’re thinking, “Oh my gosh, I don’t want to spend more than 20 bucks,” but I am here to tell you it’s very important that you actually top off your budget even if it runs out throughout the day, because there’s so many people that shop at evening, right? I mean if you don’t have a full-day budget and your advertising stops halfway through the day, you’re missing out on a lot of keyword data. You’re missing out on a lot of potential sales and this will slow down your launch.

Bradley: Okay. Now, do you focus on any keywords with your PPC? From the get go, like, “Hey, I know this is important, so I’m just going to do a manual campaign and do a high bid to make sure I get to the top,” or you’ve just focused on the auto?

Tamara: I would say if you have a product that is already selling, so if I use my beach ball, for example, if you have a beach ball and it’s flying off the shelves, now you want to sell a different type of beach ball, maybe a different color or size or material, whatever it is that is probably the only time today I would jump into a manual campaign because you already know what the market likes in terms of keywords, which ones have converted. Then you can take the shortcut and start your manual campaign. But if it is a new product, and you do not have any experience with which keywords are converting, then you have to start with automatic.

Bradley: Okay. Now, when you do these automatic campaign launches, have you ever had one or you or your students where it wasn’t successful? If it wasn’t successful, were you able to pinpoint where you did go wrong or why it did not work in this situation?

Tamara: Automatic campaigns are the type of campaign that I think, and I would say I’m pretty positive about this, you could achieve literally a 1% ACoS because automatic campaigns are all controlled by Amazon, right? They just randomly pick keywords from your listing and advertise it in front of the eyes of the customer. Whenever a student comes to me and they say, “Hey, Tamara, I have a very high ACoS in my automatic campaign, there could be two things, and usually it’s either of these two problems. One, you have a very saturated product. Your product is so saturated to a point where there’s a lot of demand, and there’s too much demand causing customers to continuously click on your ads and not buy your product, resulting in a high ACoS, because they click on it and they don’t buy, and there’s a lot of other choices out there. Or you don’t know how to optimize your automatic campaign.

Bradley: I’ve talked to people, and even when we’re doing Project X, I’m not a PPC expert by any means, but even if you have an auto-campaign and you’ve got a budget, let’s say, 20 or $30 and then you see like, “Oh my goodness I spent $30 a day, didn’t get any sales and spent $30 the next day, didn’t get any sales.” I’m like, there must be a couple of keywords here that I need to negative match so that I stopped spending. But then you see, it’s like there are 60 different keywords that you just spent 50 cents each on. But how are you able to optimize that? Is that where you go into the targeting and stopped doing the loose match and the those other things or how can you get an ACoS to even or on an auto to go 15% let alone 1%?

Tamara: What we should do, and this is just my personal opinion because this method has worked over and over again for myself and many of the people that I teach, we have to focus on relevant keywords. If we are selling a beach ball, a beach ball is obviously the main keyword and it’s relevant. If a customer searches summer beach ball for the beach, well obviously that’s 100% relevant, right? We should keep that keyword if we spend money on it, even if we may know sales. However, if a customer searches, some are toys for kids, well that’s not very relevant. I mean, technically, yes it is a toy, but it’s not specific enough where it puts the customer in a mindset they’re going to buy. In cases like that, I would automatically put the irrelevant keywords into the negative. And that’s how I would start optimizing the automatic campaign. We want to pick out keywords that are relevant and specific and negative, the ones that are irrelevant and just hanging there.

Bradley: Okay, cool. After your launch phase maybe you started to get to page one for your main keywords, you’ve got some sales. Do you change the way you do the PPC? Do you lessen your that daily amount that you’re spending? What’s the second phase?

Tamara: Be sure you collect your keyword data from your automatic campaign, and there’s no specific day. I mean sometimes, I’ve seen people run their automatic campaigns for as long as three months just before they start a manual campaign, because they have such a high demand, high competitive product where they just need more keyword data before they start their manual campaign. However, a lot of the time, I find that after 30 days, you can start your manual campaign and from your manual campaign, again, there’s no specific timeline, but after you learn which keywords have converted, you want to focus on those too, put into exact match campaigns to rank up to page one and after a keyword has gone to page one, you can use Helium 10 Keyword Tracker to track your keywords movement as well. But after it has actually made it to page one, we should start lowering our bids only for that keyword.

Bradley: Okay. All right, cool. Let’s switch gears. We’ve been talking about Amazon a little bit, but another thing you’re equally as successful in that most people know you from is your YouTube channel. I remember you talked last year about how you grew that to 4,000, but how were you able to grow that to 15,000? Did you ever have to do ads for it to run people there?

Tamara: No, actually, to be honest, I know this will sound crazy, but I don’t do much. I mean, I really don’t do much to grow my YouTube channel. I think the main thing I focus on is going through questions that the community, the Facebook community, are asking. What is everybody’s problematic area? What is everybody having trouble in? What is the new topic of the month? What are people’s biggest problems and struggles with their business? And then, I try to create content around that because a lot of people are trying to find a solution. And I want my channel to be like, “Hey, let’s go to Tamara’s channel to find a solution to whatever currently is happening.” I started focusing on that and that’s how I got all of my organic traffic. I wouldn’t say I’m growing at a fast pace, but definitely faster than a lot of others I’ve seen in the Amazon space.

Bradley: Do you have like any tips or tricks that you do? Do you try and comment to everybody’s comments or try and make a certain keyword the first word of the title or the first word you say are different things like that?

Tamara: For the YouTube topics, if I have a topic, let’s say it’s how to optimize PPC campaigns, I do look at other YouTube creators and see how they worded their titles for their YouTube videos, and I build it around that. And what is more commonly search, I would just use the title similar to it, but that’s really it. And I try to create longer videos, because I know that if I were to create one video, people obviously want to find the solution. They want the value; they want to probably learn more. I try to make longer videos as well.

Bradley: Now, I love your lighting and your setup. You’re not using any fancy screen or anything. You’re just there in one of your offices and your house, but it still just looks great because of the lighting and the camera and editing. Can you let us know what’s behind the camera? What are you using to record? What lighting do you have? Are you using a tripod, or what are you using to capture the recording? What are you using to edit? Can you walk us through there?

Tamara: Of course. When I first started my YouTube channel in July 2018, I really did not know what I was doing. I just picked up a laptop and started going at it with a normal daylight outside of my window. But as I progressed and I started doing videos more and more, I use my laptop with a webcam. I have a speaker; I upgraded my microphone, and I always only use natural lighting. Now, I don’t use any because, well, that’s just for me. I find that it just looks so much more natural and so much better.

Bradley: When I was just on with you 15 minutes ago recording a video that was natural lighting?

Tamara: Yes.

Bradley: That’s amazing. I need some of that Canadian light down here because we don’t get that light.

Tamara: I don’t know. Well, I have a ton of windows in my office in that house, but this is going to sound funny right now for all of my YouTube videos that we’re talking about. I would say in the last two months, I have only been using my iPhone 11 Max Pro.

Bradley: What? That’s your camera?

Tamara: Yes. And for anyone who is listening right now, you have to get the iPhone 11 Max Pro, because the quality and the sound, it beats everything you’re doing. The sound also on there. You’re not using the road to be good anymore. You should check out the latest video I posted. Sorry, not the last one because I did a desktop recording. When you see my face and I am recording on YouTube, all my videos in February and January are all done from my iPhone 11 Max Pro. All I do is point it to my face and I start recording.

Bradley: That’s crazy. You’re not even using an external mic or a lab mic or anything like that?

Tamara: No, I’m using my right hand and the way we go edit it, and my fiancée edits all my videos, so I actually do not know.

Bradley: Do you ever just vlog about day-to-day life at all just for the audience or is it all strategy-based videos that you do?

Tamara: More of the vlogging aspect I tend to do on Instagram. If anybody wants to follow me, it’s TamaraTee underscore (@tamaratee_). But I don’t do much vlogging on YouTube because I think I have maybe twice, but it got very little engagement, which means not many people are interested. I think I’ve built up a channel where a lot of people were just interested in entrepreneurship and Amazon. But once I started vlogging, I noticed not many people are interested in my life. I’m like, “All right, let’s just keep it personal on Instagram.”

Bradley: Cool. Now, last year, around the time we recorded you here, you were just starting your Amazon training course. Now, I’m assuming that that’s grown since then. Would you say that was because of the YouTube and because of growing your influence in Instagram and things that gave you that domain expertise? Was that what helped you to be able to start the course? You wouldn’t have just been able to start a course from scratch without anybody knowing you, right?

Tamara: Correct. Honestly speaking, I’m not sure how everything just exploded. I mean, one day, I had 100 subs and then a thousand and then like 4,000, then 10,000. I actually do not know. Honestly, I do not know how everything just picked up. But I would say most of my students and most people that learn from me, they do come from YouTube. I recently got an online tracking system to track where my customers come from and most of them are from YouTube. It’s all organic. And I only recently started running ads for my coaching. I wanted to learn more about Facebook ads and YouTube ads. That’s quite new to me still. I would say most of it, it’s all YouTube.

Bradley: That’s so cool. Now, I think I might’ve asked you last year, what some of your goals were. Whatever they were, I’m sure you’ve crushed them here and there from 2019, so what are your 2020 goals as far as maybe either the number of people you’re coaching or the number of subscribers or your YouTube reach or just your sales on Amazon? What are some of the goals that we can talk in 2021 and see if a Tamara hit them or not?

Tamara: I’ve never been a person that was too focus on growing my channel and hitting 100,000 subs or getting a million views. I was never that person. I mean, my goal is just to voice everything that I’ve done throughout my career and hope to make a change in other people’s lives. I have personal friends that are still struggling going to their nine to five jobs, getting paid pennies, like not pennies, but they don’t make enough to do things that they love in their life. I guess it comes with growing the channel and growing the Facebook group and getting more students to the program. I really do want to voice that entrepreneurship and selling on Amazon and any online business can really help you. It’ll give you the freedom to make more money and to really live a life that you deserve.

Bradley: Cool. What about life goals then, like maybe somewhere you haven’t traveled yet. I mean you obviously hit one of the biggest ones you’ve probably had in your life, which is to buy a new house. Is there a special car you want or is there a special trip to Egypt that you’d love to do?

Tamara: Yeah, actually, buying the $2 million house wasn’t even really a goal. It just happened, because right now, I live in a two-bedroom apartment with my fiancé and since the business is growing, we noticed that we needed more space. And if you’re working from the same office every day, I just feel like it can really take a toll on my production levels. I thought, “Okay, if we did move, which we can, we should move up.” We’re getting married this year. I just thought that I could alternate different rooms if I wanted to film in and just get away from the noise when he’s helping me edit videos. I could go on different floors of the house. That’s how that happened.

Bradley: Right. Well, real quick though, real quick. Seven bedrooms. Are you planning on some little ones?

Tamara: I’m actually at an age where I should be having kids because a lot of my friends have kids, but we’ve worked just doing things. We haven’t really planned for anything and when people ask me, actually, one of my students asked me, “Why did you buy such a big house?” I think we just both enjoy the space, and maybe in the future we’ll have maybe one child, but it’s definitely not in our top priority right now.

Bradley: Okay. All right. Well, all the bedrooms then if we come visit you, you can give us two or three of those bedrooms for some of our office staff, I guess, right?

Tamara: Yeah. I’m doing a house tour for everybody. I’m thinking about just having multiple offices. One of my biggest goals for this year and beyond is to really, really optimize my production levels and be extremely focused in my work, because that’s the only way to grow faster. Make more money and do better at everything I do.

Bradley: Awesome. Awesome. Now, before we get into your 30-second valuable tip that we’re going to have¾that’s something new that we do on the show since the last time you were on¾we also do this other thing. We’re going to do this. This is called the search volume game. Okay, so I’m going to give you three related keywords. These are keywords that people search on Amazon, and then I’m going to give you three different search volumes, and you’re going to try and match the keyword to the search without cheating. All right? And everybody plays this at home too and they listen to. All right, so since we were talking about vlogging, these are going to be vlogging-related keywords, okay? In no specific order, the keywords are vlogging tripod, vlogging camera, and vlog light, almost all of which you don’t need any more since you just use the iPhone X Max and your natural lighting, but again, vlog light, vlogging tripod, vlogging camera. Now the three search volumes for one of these keywords. The one who searched the most is searched for about 13,000 times. The next one is only searched for about 2,000 times. And the last one is searched for about 700 times only. Which one is the most searched and which one is the middle and which one’s the least?

Tamara: The least searched is camera, vlogging camera. And the one in the middle with the average search volume, sorry, that was vlog light. The vlogging tripod is the other keyword. Tripod would be the highest, the most searched, and light would be the middle.

Bradley: Okay. All right, so here we go. This was completely different. By the way. I’ve done this 30 times. Only one person has ever gotten them. All right. And this is the exact reason why I just love it. I hate it when somebody gets it right because that ruins my whole premise for this. But the whole point of this is just like with PPC or just like when you’re optimizing your listing, what you yourself might think is the converting keyword or the most searched is sometimes not what the nation as a whole is doing. How many times in doing PPC you come up with words that you converted for and you’re like, “What? Somebody searched this and bought my product?” I’m sure you get that all the time, right? You would’ve never even thought in a million years. The actual biggest one was vlogging camera with 13,000 . I’m thinking maybe people are more at home now because of coronavirus, and they’re like, “Hey, I’m going to start a vlog and I need a camera.”

Bradley: Tripod is the next one. And then vlog light, believe it or not, is only 700. I think that’s because there’s just a lot of people like you who maybe just using natural light now or something. There you have it. You’ll never know. That’s why you always use tools like Helium 10, why you always study your search term reports from PPC because you need to know what people are doing so yup. Anyways, now we get to the part of the show. You’ve been giving us tips throughout, but this part is what we call the TST, which stands for T S T 30-second tip. What is something you can say in under 30 seconds that’s a very valuable, maybe unique to you, actionable for our listeners?

Tamara: My biggest tip is to learn how to manage your money in your personal life, because if you do not know how to save your money, invest your money, spend your money towards the right things in your life, you will never make it as a business owner.

Bradley: I love it. That is important. I mean, if you didn’t do that, there’s no way you would have bought the house that you just did or been able to go on those vacations that you did. Well, Tamara, thank you so much for joining us. It’s cool to have you on here a second time since it’s been over a year since you were on the first time and been awesome to see how you’ve grown in your personal life and your Amazon sales, in your social media reach. It’s really great to see your journey, and I’m excited to see what the rest of 2020 holds for you, so we’ll definitely have you on the beginning of 2021 as well.

Tamara: Great. Thank you so much for having me, Bradley.

Bradley: Thank you. Just how people can find you on the interwebs. You mentioned your Instagram, but how can they find your YouTube channel, your coaching?

Tamara: YouTube. You guys can search Tamara Tee Amazon. That’s Tamara, just like how it sounds Tee Amazon and I should pop up right there.

Bradley: Awesome. Awesome. All right, we’ll see you on the next episode.

Tamara: All right, thanks Bradley.

Bradley: Quick note guys. Don’t forget that regardless where you are listening to this podcast, whether it’s on your iPhone or on Stitcher, on Spotify, that you hit the subscribe button so you can be notified every time we drop a new episode.