#200 – The Latest Amazon Product Launch Strategy – A “Maldives Honeymoon”

When it comes to selling on Amazon, one of the most important moments is the period just after the initial product launch. It’s referred to as the “honeymoon” period and there’s a lot of talk in e-commerce communities about just how much extra “juice” Amazon gives to brand new products. 

Of course, it’s in Amazon’s best interest that products (and sellers) be successful. That’s why (according to popular thought) they give new ASINs a little extra ranking push. 

In this episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Helium 10’s Director of Training and Chief Brand Evangelist, Bradley Sutton takes a little “honeymoon” of his own. Because he wanted to showcase his new Amazon launch strategy involving aspects of the honeymoon period, he wanted to take a trip. Because this is episode 200, and because the strategy that he had come up with was so extraordinary, he wanted to go somewhere special. 

If you Google “extravagant honeymoons,” one of the first things that pops up is the pristine nation of islands in the Indian Ocean called the Maldives. So, of course Bradley traveled 30 hours each way for a 24 hour stay to record this podcast. 

After listening to his “Maldives Honeymoon” strategy, I think you’ll agree that it warrants such a special name!

In episode 200 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley presents the Maldives Honeymoon:

• 02:15 – A Passion for Amazon Product Launches
• 04:45 – Where Did the Name, “Maldives Honeymoon” Come From?
• 06:30 – What are the Key Factors that Cause the Maldives Effect to Happen?
• 09:30 – Related Keywords Fuel a March to Page One   
• 14:45 – Reverse Engineering Amazon Ranking Success
• 17:30 – Waiting to Create the Listing Makes a Big Difference 
• 22:30 – How to Send Multiple Signals to Amazon  
• 26:00 – The Maldives Effect Seems to Work with Mature Products   
• 31:00 – Making Product Launches More Accessible  
• 35:30 – Title Keywords Have Super-Powers
• 41:00 – Leveling-Up with Phrase-Form Keywords
• 46:00 – Taking Advantage of FBM and 3PLs   
• 49:00 – What the Serious Sellers Podcast is All About 
• 51:00 – Bradley’s Travel Hacks    

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.

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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.
• 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 Sutton: This is a milestone episode guys, Episode 200. And it’s going to be a special one as I will give you an update on an ongoing case study I’ve been working on for a year now on how to make Amazon product launches have more bang for your buck than you ever thought possible. I’m calling it the Maldives honeymoon effect. Oh, by the way, I actually flew to the Maldives just to record this episode. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

Bradley Sutton: Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that’s a completely BS free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the Amazon world. And today, if you guys are watching this on YouTube or some video platform, you’ll see that I’m actually on location. If you’re listening to this in your car or something, you might hear some background noise because I’m actually recording this from the Maldives. I’m at the Waldorf Astoria here in the Maldives right here on the Indian ocean. I believe this is this body of water behind me. I’m not sure, but this is very appropriate to what I’m talking about today. I specifically came here to the Maldives just to record this episode, to talk about something called the Maldives Honeymoon that I’ve been studying for almost two years now, but really heavily the last year.

Bradley Sutton: So I am I’m here enjoying myself. I only came here for one day, but I really want to kind of just like drive home the value of what potentially this could mean for your Amazon business and how it can help you with your launches, your relaunches, and understanding how the Amazon algorithm works, because that’s kind of like what we all want to do. So, as you guys may or may not know, one of my specialties before, when I was a consultant for Amazon sellers was launch, alright, I was just obsessed with launching. And that’s why I was launching over 400 products for other customers and clients of mine and the companies I work for is because that was one of my passions and it just fascinated me how the Amazon algorithm worked for search position, and the kind of just intricacies of it, right. As Amazon sellers, you almost have to be obsessed with that because sometimes the search– or not sometimes, usually where you show up in the search results for the main keywords for your kind of product is kind of like the factor on how successful you can be on Amazon. So, that was actually how Manny and Gui, the co-founders of Helium 10, found me is because how was that one guy who would always write these super, super long things in the Helium 10 users Facebook group, now called Helium 10 members group, just talking about ranking and launching and everything, right? So, it’s always been a passion of mine. Now over the last couple of years, as you guys know, I still do launch things, case studies, and we did Project X obviously, and then for about a year and a half or so, even before Project X, I just noticed sometimes there would be just some ridiculous results coming from initial launches.

Bradley Sutton: Whereas, normally for something that would have a search volume of a certain amount, you would think that you would have to give away hundreds, your 200 or 300 units, and then I would do some experiments. And then I could get to the top of page one with like 30 or 20 or 10 or even less. And so to me, it was just fascinating. I’m like, what is causing this? Is there a way to crack this code and spoiler alert guys, I am not here to give you some kind of special secret sauce formula that is some great algorithm. And you just plug in some numbers and you are guaranteed to get to a certain position. No. As you guys know, Amazon is not that consistent, but I’m comfortable now to share with you guys what I’ve been working on, because I am narrowing it down, what exactly it takes to get these super great results when launching, not just when launching initially, but also later on, like, what if you go out of stock and trying to relaunch, or what about if it’s a mature product and you don’t know, or don’t want to “reset” the honeymoon period, right. So, I’m going to give you guys pretty much the culmination of the last years’ worth. And I’ve kind of called this internally Project Maldives Honeymoon. Now, why did I call it that? Well, we all know about the honeymoon period, Helium 10 didn’t make that up. Might’ve been ZonBlast, back in the day who I maybe first heard talking about that, but it’s pretty much standard that everybody understands that during the beginning of a product’s life cycle on Amazon, there’s this certain period of time, be it three weeks, be at six weeks, be it eight weeks where things you do give it more rank juice like a search find buy, or PPC. You get added bonus. This is for a– you get added impressions, different things that Amazon kind of gives you the benefit of the doubt when it’s a newer listing. There’s nothing set in stone as far as how long it lasts.

Bradley Sutton: Sometimes you can create a listing and then close it and suppress it, and it might preserve the honeymoon period. There’s a lot of speculation on that. I’ve tested that myself and yeah, usually it does work, but not, it’s not a hundred percent of the time, but the thing that I’m talking about today, and the thing that I started noticing is beyond the honeymoon, like it’s just a ridiculous honeymoon. So what I did when I first started looking into this, I was just curious. I’m like, what is like a ridiculous honeymoon, like super expensive or most luxurious honeymoon. I started Googling these things. And the thing that kept coming up was Maldives. If you’re a big baller and you get married, you go to the Maldives for your honeymoon. So I’m like, you know what? I’m going to call this the Maldives Honeymoon. That’s why as you guys can see behind me, I am here in the Maldives because I just want to take it to the next level and really make you guys remember this phrase of Maldives Honeymoon. So I came here to record it. Now, let me just go over some of the things that we’re going to talk about. And to me, in a nutshell, I’m going to fast forward to the end. The things I have found are super important to get this Maldives honeymoon where you just have like super powers almost as it were when you’re launching a product, things that are important of obviously search volume, the sales for the keywords, title. That’s one of the biggest things that I’ve discovered is super, super important, early launch, not creating the listing two months in advance, but like creating it super-fast.

Bradley Sutton: I’m going to talk to you guys more about that in the future, in the future. In the later parts of this episode, also, how many other listings have maybe have that word in the title? That’s something important and also a relevant activity or relevant keywords to a certain product or to a certain keyword. And we’re going to talk a little bit on some of these results on why I’ve kind of narrowed it down to these factors here. And if you’re watching the video and I keep wiping my brow here, it’s because it’s really hot and humid. So I’m sorry about that. Anyways, let’s get going. Let’s go back to about over a year now when we launched the Project X, not the coffin shelf, but the egg holder, the wooden egg tray, right? This is when I first started, just got going a little bit deeper. I didn’t even talk about this in Project X. And you know, I’ll never mention anything about Maldives Honeymoon or anything, but I was kind of like at the same time doing my own little experimentation. So, let me show you an example of what I call the Maldives Honeymoon effect. All right. So, we did a search find buy campaign for the keyword wooden egg holder. All right. Wooden egg holder, at the time, it has a monthly estimated search warrant, about 600. All right. So, nothing that is a humongous keyword, but that’s pretty decent search volume. Search about 20 times a day. And at the beginning, before we did the search find buy, we were ranking at position 183. What’s that? Page 4, right? Check this out. I did one unit, one day, search find buy. I think I might’ve used easy rank for that one unit. One day we went from position 183 to page one, position 12 within three days. All right. Now wooden egg holder was the key keyword that we did. And that was at the time in the title. All right. So I’m like, okay. Title. It’s great. That’s just one example, but I’m onto something here. One search find buy got me from page or position 183 to position 12. At the same time though, see, this was the secondary thing that I was testing because I had a theory that it helps when you’re doing concurrent keywords that have the same seed keyword in it. All right. For example, I did egg holder, which is the seed keyword of wooden egg holder, right. But to me, it, wasn’t just the fact that, Hey, it’s showing relevancy to Amazon that because egg holder’s in there, but it also the fact that maybe Amazon is potentially relating these keywords to each other.

Bradley Sutton: So it gets added bonus. Again, guys, I’m not going to sit here. Sometimes you hear a guru say like I have deduce this, is absolutely the case because of this. And there’s no, I’m not going to try and sit here and try and claim that I have cracked the code of the Amazon eight, nine algorithm or something like that. I’m just explaining to you what my theory was. Whenever you have a scientific process here, right. You’ve got a thesis, right. Or a theory and you go try and prove it. So, that was a kind of theory that I was basing it off of, about this relevance of the keywords. So, egg holder, 14,000 search volume at the time. Okay. Now I did more than one unit in one day. I did four days and 12 units total only about three units a day. That’s it. 12 units for a 14,000 search volume keyword. We started at position 68 at the time. So we were already on page two. And by a few days after this ended, we got to page one position 2 off of 12 units of search find buy. So obviously at this moment, I’m like super, super interested. Now at that same time again, at that same time, it wasn’t just those two. I actually also did fresh egg holder and I did more keywords too. So bear with me here. This is part one of my tests I did fresh egg holder. You noticed that the trend here, wooden egg holder, egg holder and fresh egg holder. Our fresh egg holder was another one of those keywords that didn’t have too much search volume. It was only about 400 at the time. So I only did three units. I’m sorry, three days, five units, total three days, five units total. Not five units a day three, five units total. We started at position 66, got to position page one, position five with only five units of search find buy. And to me, the interesting thing, again, egg holder, wooden egg holder was in the title now fresh egg holder was not, but I’m like, okay, I have a feeling that Amazon is still relating this keyword, but does that work to keywords that maybe don’t have the full seed keyword? All right. Obviously I think we all knew that egg holder related keywords, egg holder, fresh egg holder, wooden egg holder by itself are obviously related to each other. But what happens if I do keywords that don’t have the same exact root keyword in it? Right? So the next one I did at the same time was completely different.

Bradley Sutton: Ceramic egg tray, ceramic egg tray. Now, at the time I had some data, I think it was from PPC showing that we got a lot of clicks from ceramic related keywords, which I didn’t. I had no idea. To me, what does a wooden egg holder have to do with ceramic? Right? But there was obvious data that showed that people who are looking for wooden egg holders were also originally interested in ceramic ones. So I’m like, okay, maybe Amazon is relating ceramic related keywords for an egg holder to this wooden one. So, I’m going to try this at the same time and ceramic egg tray at the time had only 300 searches. I did three days, four units, total. Search find buy. Now, believe it or not, we were actually already on page one for that keywords. I don’t know how, maybe because it was a low search or a low search volume, but we went from position 23 to position two. At the same time I did Easter egg holder, another egg holder keyword, but a little bit different went from position 23 to position two. These are all– I did these all at the same time, but we’re not talking like hundreds of units. Like I said, each one was like three units, five units, four units, et cetera. And then the last one I did was Easter egg tray, Easter egg tray. Like to me, I was like, okay, I did ceramic egg tray and I did Easter egg holder. Let me try Easter egg tray. And hopefully Amazon is going to kind of relate it. Sure enough, 300 search on keyword only did for search find buy, went to position two page one, position two. So that didn’t prove anything guys. All right. That was just phase one. But my point was so far, my theories were kind of correct so far. Again anything on Amazon can change, and it could have been a fluke, but my theory was, I know egg holder is in the title. I’m going to do well for keywords that have egg holder as a phrase. But what about related keywords that maybe weren’t necessarily in the title, but are related to products that have those keywords in the title? Again, everything to me like the title was so important. Okay. So, it worked there. I mean, we’re talking, let me just calculate it all up here. All of those keywords, a total of 34 units we gave away. No, I’m sorry. 31 units we gave away. And it was a total of over 16,000 search volume. And we got to the top half of page one, most of them, the top five of page one on every single one with minimal giveaways all at the same time.

Bradley Sutton: Now you guys remember the Project 5k that I started a couple of months after that, where I started doing some like very cheap products and one of them was some straws and one of them was a pink and gold straws. And that was actually the keyword that I tested. Now, this one at the time had 600 search volume, gave away three or five units over three days. That’s it, five units over three days. And we got to the top half of page one again. So I’m like, okay, this is still great. It’s not really proven anything But minimum, we’re doing minimum giveaways here or search find buys in order to get to top half of page one. This is almost unheard of, right? This is unheard of. We all know the CPR number is how much you need to get to page one. But the CPR number for all these keywords is probably like three, four, five times as much as what I was doing. So, my whole goal of this was like, how do I reverse engineer? Why these are so successful? So, it’s like process of elimination. Okay. My next thing that I did, you guys remember the other case study I was doing, I was doing hemp creams, right from another person’s account. Now this one was a topical hemp cream. It was like a roller. I don’t know you like, it’s like a roller ball and you put it on your arm and your back, et cetera, et cetera. And we launched it for this one company. So, I tried three different keywords each with only 300 to 400 searches. This is a very, very niche product. Not many people are searching for a hemp based role on pain cream, right? So, the keywords don’t have many search volume, but all I did was about four units to six units per keyword, right. And still, 400 search volume, that should not have been enough. That should not have been enough. Normally under the CPR, it’s eight is usually the minimum or eight days, right? Every single one of these, we went from not ranked to page one and two of them, top three of page one, just with three and four unit giveaways. Again, what was the point I made a seed keyword that was in the title and phrase form. And then I did some research into the keywords that I thought would be related to it, would be highly related because the keywords that were performing well, or I’m sorry, the products that were performing well for that seed keyword, they were also performing well for these other keywords. So in my mind, I’m like Amazon is hopefully relating these keywords. So if I get activity on one keyword, even without doing anything, I’ll get activity on the others. But then especially added to that. If I’m doing at least two, three, four giveaways or search find buy on these other keywords, well, maybe that’s just going to give me that much more boost. And again, it came true page one on all of them. I’m not trying to say with two different tests here, that that completely proves that this is an infallible method, but again, I was on the right track.

Bradley Sutton: We’re still about like in history here, like what, eight, nine months ago. Okay. Now, as we kept going, I launched a new product. This is under a different Project 5k, where I spent $5,000 on one product. There’s other podcast episodes I have about that. Now on this one, the main keyword for this had a search volume of 4,000, all right. A little bit stronger, not a little bit, a lot stronger than those hemp keywords and those straws and everything. All right. The main keyword I knew all the sales were going to come from, or most of it had 4,000 search volume. Now, when we started the product, all right, by the way, let me just explain something really quick. When I say started a product to me, this is the main, one of the main keys of the Maldives honeymoon is all of these case studies I did, or most of them, what I did was I did not create the listing when it was being manufactured. So, I can put the FN SKU in the first shipment. No, I had everything manufactured with no sticker and sent to me in California. And then basically what I did on all of these, including the Project X one was I created the listing the day that I was ready to go live. So I created the listing just to get my FN SKU stickers. I put on my, that are in my warehouse, and then we sent it that day. But then I also turn the fulfilled by merchant listing on that day and started getting sales the next day on the search find buy campaigns and organic and PPC. I was actually getting sales too. But to me that’s like a key factor of my theory of the Maldives Honeymoons is I am like starting. I mean, these listings are literally created and within hours, maximum 24 hours, they’re getting their first sale.

Bradley Sutton: That was one of my theories that I was like, Hey, I think this is going to help. And so far to me, it shows that it has in most cases. All right. So again, this is an another product. I started 4,000 search volume. We were positioned 100 on day one when we first started, right, right off the bat, we got position 100 because it was a pretty narrow niche. There was not that much competition. Now for this, there is only one other listing that had it in phrase form in the title. And to me, that is like the other big thing. If not the biggest thing in the Maldives Honeymoon theory is that if there’s not that many listings that have the keyword, target keyword phrase form, it’s going to help you a lot. All right. So only one other listing have this in phrase form in the title. We were position 100, three days, eight units, that’s it. I gave eight units over three days. Again, I’m not talking 24 units, not eight units a day. It was like two and four is what I did. We went from page two, position 100, to page one position one, within like five days of this brand new product, zero reviews. So again, the Maldives Honeymoon kind of methodology worked for me on that one. At the same time, I targeted another keyword. Like just, let’s just pretend for example, that the keyword was coffin shelf. Well, this one would be like coffin bookshelf, or something like that. All right. So, it was even a suffix. It had the same suffix, even as the main keyword, it only had about a thousand search volume. We went from 107, position 107 to page one, position seven. How many units of that take? 1000 search one keyword, one search find buy that’s it got made at the top of page one for that keyword. The last keyword. Let’s just pretend that it’s a color. So like, if it was coffin shelf, let’s just say it was coffin shelf red. All right. So I, again, I took that main keyword again, I’m trying to send different signals to Amazon about a core keyword being super important to it. All right. So I did the color and that one only had like 400 search volume, right? Only 400 search volume. Again, I only did one unit because I already, I was already throwing units at these other keywords at the same simultaneous, right. One unit. We went from position 97 to position four. All right. Now, since I’m using a coffin shelf analogy, let’s pretend one of those somewhat related keywords, but it’s a very broad keyword, right. Would be for the Project X coffin shelf. Would’ve been Gothic decor. You guys remember that Gothic decor had like tens of thousands of searches, but it wasn’t really like exactly what people are looking for, but it was a good keyword for the coffin shelf. So, this other product had a similar keyword to Gothic decor. And this one had 20,000 searches. So like I knew this was not a main money-making keyword, but in looking at the other competitor, there was doing, they were ranked very high for that keyword, like top three. So I’m like, okay, this is a good keyword for my product. So, all right. If I am sending this relevant traffic to these, again, we’re calling it coffin shelf related keywords, then would I get even an added bonus if I’m also targeting this other keyword, let’s call it Gothic decor. Sure enough. What I did was I went and I sent only eight units over three days to this keyword that had 20,000 searches. All right. How did that do for me? 20,000 searches guy, this is way more searches than even the main keyword for the product which only had like three, 4,000.

Bradley Sutton: We went from not ranked to page one, position four. Page one, position four, all right. Eight units now, let’s just pretend we’re still talking about a coffin shelf. If there was a keyword Gothic decor, you take away a suffix of one of the words. So let’s just call it goth decor. All right. I mean, you could use, instead of wooden egg tray, let’s call it wood egg tray. You guys get my drift. I’m sorry. I can’t give the exact keywords because this isn’t my account. So I got to kind of protect the innocent here. Anyways, goth decor. Let’s just call it that. Unless you say it had like 6,000 searches, right? Because this keyword had about 6,000 searches, and it was not ranked. We gave away five units over three days. We went from not ranked to page one position one. Page one, position one with only five units, because in my opinion was, we’re getting all these signals first. There was the core coffin shelf keywords, and then in my opinion, according to Amazon’s algorithm is like, Hey, the only other product that was really performing well for these coffin shelf keywords, they were also a good performer for Gothic decor. So like, I think without anything, I would have gotten some love. But then when I did throw some units at Gothic decor, Amazon was like, Oh, obviously this is a– we were writing this or we’re going to give them a lot of love. Oh, wait a minute, Gothic decor. Now they’re doing Gothic. Or, for sure this is a relevant product for this keyword as well. So these are, again, I’m not, I’m not trying to say I’m speaking for the Amazon algorithm or Jeff Bezos. I’m just saying, this is my thought process, as I’m deciding what keywords to do. So, goth decor or wood egg tray, if it was wooden before got me to the top of page one, I’m trying to keep using these illustrations here. So let’s say it was goth decor, right? The next keyword would be Gothic home decor. Do you guys see what I did there? Let’s say one keyword was Gothic decor and one keyword was goth decor, Gothic home decor. To me again, would get some added bonus if I’m targeting it at the same time. Now this other keyword had about 8,000 searches. I gave only six units. Over four days, we went from position 280 to page one, position two. So guys, I don’t know if you’re keeping score, but this was crazy. This one launch that I did over the less than one week, only four, or like five days total. We gave a total number of units out, search find buy 29 units, not even 30 units.

Bradley Sutton: And these were targeting keywords that total almost 40,000 searches. And we got to the top five or top six of page, one on every single one of them on a product with zero reviews. All right. And most of them, we actually stayed there because we did start converting organically. So this was about six months ago. I’m like, man, this is getting really, really exciting, but I’m just still not exactly 100% sure. Where is this coming from? Like what are the other factors? All right. So like until now there’s still just theories. All right. So now what happened was, I was like, what happens if it’s not during the honeymoon? Can this Maldives honeymoon still work on a mature product using the same theories behind it? So as you guys know, I let the coffin shelf and the egg tray get out of stock on Amazon. All right. Because I wasn’t managing it really well. We didn’t have the inventory management in Helium 10 yet at the time. So I let it go out of stock. So when we got back into stock of the egg holder and egg tray, we were ranked low, like instead of being number one for egg holder and egg tray, we were like bottom of page one. One was ranked like 21 was ranked 30. So I’m like, I’m not going to do any fancy hacks on resetting the honeymoon. But I already know that egg holder and egg tray are in the title. These are important keywords and we have a history of good interaction. So I’m just hoping because it’s in the title. And I had such a great interaction with this keyword before organically. Maybe Amazon will show me some Maldives love, right? So, what I did was all I did was a holder at the time had 17,000 searches. I only gave it 12 over four days, 12 units. And we went from position 30 back to position two, the same thing for the egg tray keyword that had 3000 searches at the time gave away eight units or four days. We went from position 19, 20 to page one, position one. So I was like, okay, this is great. So maybe we get to this Maldives, what I’m calling Maldives love because they’re titled keywords and we have good interaction with them and I’m doing it at the same time. Right? I might, I’m doing it simultaneous, simultaneous search find buys on both of those keywords. That’s what worked. So I was like, okay, this is great. Now, at that time I had a brand new product. I was launching on a separate Project 5k, all right, this is a kitchen and dining product.

Bradley Sutton: All right. And so I’m like, okay, I’m going to try and go for three keywords, had started three keywords. The first thing that I was curious about is, as you guys know CPR, the CPR, Cerebro Product Rank formula originally made by Manny Coats was heavily reliant on search volume because we figured that, Hey, sales is also a factor of search volume. And depending on how much something is searched, that’s probably similar to the ratio, how much it’s actually bought. And then that’s what really determines how many “giveaway” or search find buy in order to get some ranked juice to get to page one. Right. So what I did was I chose three different keywords and I gave the same amount to each one of them. Now here’s the thing. Two of those keywords only had about 400 to 500 searches. The third one had 1500 searches, but for each of them, I gave out an equal amount of units, only four units over three days, four units over three days. So what were the results? First of all, four units over three days on a new launch should not get you really that far right in under normal circumstances. But again, I chose one keyword that was definitely, definitely in the title and that I knew Amazon was going to be relevant for it. And this was in the canonical URL. That’s another thing that I noticed I’m still testing out, but I did notice some slight numbers where if it was in the canonical URL, I got like a slight bump in the reaction on the keywords. But anyways, I targeted that keyword. And then I searched that keyword and I was like, what other relevant keywords are products that are doing well for that first keyword that also doing well for those other, these other keywords. Right? And so I pick two other keywords that other products are doing well on. All right. Again, that’s part of my theory– cannot that can keywords be related by Amazon, that don’t necessarily have the same root keywords or seed keywords because these three keywords I chose, two of them were completely different than that seed keyword. It wasn’t like egg holder and then wooden egg. No, we’re talking like egg tray and then ceramic egg basket or something like that, kind of a completely different keyword. All right. So what happened here? The two keywords that I gave out four units, for that had 400 to 500 search volume. Both of them actually got to page one position four. Now that was just kind of a fluke, but the main point was that it worked all right.

Bradley Sutton: I got to page one, the top five of page one, but to that keyword that only had the– or that had 1500 searches. And I still only gave four units. I got to page one, but only position 23. So to me, that kind of at least in this part validated my theory that yes, search volume and the sales still is relevant. As far as if from a relative standpoint, how many units you might have to give away for a certain product. So it’s still good to look at search volume for that. All right. Now about three to four weeks later, another keyword I launched for that same product, because I’m like, okay, we know that I might be, or I think that I’m getting a bump because I’m creating these products the day before I start getting sales. Right? So that’s to me, that was a big factor of the Maldives Honeymoon. But if I start doing well on a couple of these keywords, can that Maldives Honeymoon keep going? So, four weeks later I tried a different keyword that was related to those ones that I was doing well on organically. It had 700 searches. We were at position 20. I never did any search find buy before we just organically got to position 20, in my opinion, because we were doing well for those other keywords. And maybe we did a couple in PPC as well, and I gave away only four units, four units. It’s all I did. And now this is a four to five week old listing. We went from position 19 to page one, position one. So, I mean, non-stop, I’m just getting validation left and right on some of these theories, but I’m like, man, is there a formula here? What is going on? So guys, if you’re waiting for them formula, like I said, I don’t have one for you, but I hope you’re taking notes because these, the reason why I’m giving you guys my details here is because it’s strongly my belief that a lot of these factors are very important into why these were so successful, because think about it as how many people, how many of you out there, maybe we’re excited about launching a product, but then didn’t launch it because then you start reading about, Oh my goodness, I have to use many chat to give away 500 units, or I’ve got to do this. You know? So that’s like too much competition. How many of you guys didn’t launch a product because you thought the launch was going to be too expensive. So that was, that’s like my motivation for doing this.

Bradley Sutton: I was like, man, I want to make product launches more accessible. You can’t just snap your fingers and get to page one. But I was like, how close to snapping fingers can we do so that more people out there are going to be able to launch without having to take away their kid’s college fund or something. Right. All right. So anyways, back to this story, all of these things and the ones I gave you were just a small fraction of these tests. I did literally dozens more tests that all were like telling me the same things that the same things were important. Right. And some things I didn’t even realize before, and then I will add it to my list. So about two months ago, or about a month and a half ago, I’m like, you know what, I’m pretty confident here that I kind of have a lot of the formula down. I don’t have like exact numbers, but let me try an all-out test on this one project, another Project 5k product that I was going to launch from scratch. And let’s see what kind of results when I cry and put all of the things that worked on these, all these things I’ve been doing for the last year, right? So, I launched a keyword for just one. This is crazy guys, for just one keyword. All right, this is the main keyword for this product. Main keyword for this product. Imagine if it was a coffin shelf, which has not been a keyword would have been coffin shelf. So I was like, I’m not going to do one search find buy on any other keywords except this one. And I’m going to go a little bit heavier on it. All right. Now this keyword at the time had 4,500 searches about, all right. So, I sent 20 units over six days, 20 units over six. Still well, well under what the CPR number says that you would probably have to give away. Well, well under that, all right, but it’s kind of almost overkill if you compare it to those numbers I was doing before. Right. But my theory was, I’m just going to go all in on this one keyword that’s right part of my title. And I had, there was one other competitor that had this product and I analyzed very carefully the keywords that they were performing well, and their main keyword obviously was this main keyword as well. So I’m like, okay, if I really show Amazon that I’m crushing it with this keyword. And I have these other keywords in my title as well. Then Amazon definitely is going to maybe give me the benefit of the doubt based on their analysis of the only other competitor out there and their performance.

Bradley Sutton: So that was my theory going in. All right. So 4,300 to 4,500 search volume. I gave 20 over six days, I went from position 100 when I’ve barely launched, I already was on position 100, to page one position one, even beating the main guy within three days of my launch, page one, position one. Now here’s the thing, these other keywords, I started getting some activity. All right. One of the keywords, nobody had it in the title. All right. So check this out again. Title to me was important. So I was like, okay, this keyword, I’m going to put this keyword in my title. I’m not going to target it. And guys check this out. This keyword does not share even one keyword with that main keyword. I did. So imagine if we’re talking about a coffin shelf, it would have been like Gothic decor, like completely unrelated as far as not sharing any similar keywords. So, but I put it in the title and nobody else had that keyword in the title. Like, I don’t know why, but at the time nobody had the keyword in the title, but this was a keyword that had 1500 searches a month, 1500 searches a month. Now let me just preface this. I did not have it in the title from day one. There was one word missing. I was indexed for all of it. So I was actually page one, position 40 before I put it to the title. So like two of the words were in the title. Okay. So, check this out. On the eighth of, Oh what month was this? This is the 8th of September. I think it was the 8th of September. I was like, wow, I didn’t do anything on this keyword. And I got to page one, position 40. What if I just add that one missing keyword, which was already my bullet points.

Bradley Sutton: I’m going to add it to the title so that now it’s in phrase form. All right. Now it’s in phrase form in my title is keyword with 1500 searches. Within two days, I went from position 40 to page one, position one without even one search find buy. Alright, just shows you how important the title according for this Maldives Honeymoon thing or for Amazon new launches, title keywords guys, man, that is super, super important. All right. Now another keyword. Check this out guys. This is ridiculous. All right. Another keyword I had in the title from day one, I had it in the title from day one. Now this was a keyword. That was one of those kind of like, let’s just keep going with the same illustration, like Gothic decor or a coffin shelf. All right. It’s somewhat, it’s somewhat related. It was like that, uh, like Gothic decor, right? But the other existing competitor, the only guy who was selling something similar to the product that I just launched, he was doing well for that keyword. Right. But he didn’t even have it in his title. But, he was already like, I think it was like top– at one point he was top five organically for it. That keyword guys, I did not send one search find buy. This is a keyword that at the time had 60,000 searches, 60,000 searches. But my theory was, Hey, I really targeted the crap out of that one main keyword. Right? I did overkill in my opinion, using the Maldives method and I’m doing well for these other keywords that that other guy was also doing well for. So in my opinion, I was like, this is just going to hopefully send some relevancy signals to Amazon and say, Hey, not only should you expect me to do well for this keyword, just because my product is doing well for these keywords that the other product did well for. But in addition, it’s in my title. All right. Now, let me explain to you why I’ve been so adamant about the importance of title. I even discovered something in the Amazon backend, a metric that Amazon actually scores listings or scores products by keywords, from their title. This is an actual metric in Amazon. All right. So, you enter in a keyword to Amazon and it will give you like the top 5,100, 300, 400. This is not Amazon recommended guys. This is something completely different than Amazon recommended. It’s going to give you the top ranked, according to whatever algorithm it’s using, products for that keyword. But only if it’s in phrase form in the title. When I discovered that I was like, Whoa, that’s crazy. So, for example, let me just, let me try and illustrate this for you a little bit. Let’s say we have the coffin shelf product.

Bradley Sutton: All right. Now let’s say, I don’t know what kind of keyword I can use. Oh yeah. The keyword is Manny’s Mysterious Oddities. All right. Manny’s Mysterious Oddities coffin shelf. Now, obviously Manny’s oddities is in the title, right? But it’s not in phrase form because it goes, Manny’s Mysterious Oddities. Well, if you were to enter Manny’s oddities into this Amazon system in the backend, it would not even rank that product because it only considers him his whole ranking system that it has, products that have that keyword in the title. So, when I saw that and when I discovered that I’m like, man phrase form in the title is important. Now I think any keyword in the title is important. I mean, I tested it before guys. And I’m going to show you guys some stats and figures here too, but I think anything in the title is important, but the fact that Amazon would only even rate a product on how it ranks for a keyword. If it’s in phrase form in title really showed me that phrase form in titles is super important. Okay. So anyways, this keyword 60,000 searches, all right. I had it in the title. Didn’t do one search find buy. I was unranked when I first launched, but within 1.5 weeks, 1.5 weeks, who says that? One and a half weeks, I got to page one position one, 60,000 searches, page one, position one for this keyword without even one search find buy guys. That’s why I’m here in the Maldives. That’s to me was like Maldives Honeymoon action right there. Now here’s something interesting. One keyword was not ranking at all, not ranking at all. I was index for it, but it was not ranking at all after one week. I’m like, dang it. I really want to rank for this keyword. So one of the keywords is it’s a two word keyword. So like, let’s say that again. Keyword is coffin shelf. Maybe I only had shelf in a title and then coffin was somewhere else. So, what I did was I went in and this is, I think it was on September the eighth at 1:00 AM in the morning. I usually get my work done in the middle of the night. 1:00 AM. All right. I added the other word that was missing to the title. I was already indexed for it, both keywords were my listing. I added it to the title. So that, that keyword was in phrase form. This is a keyword that had 10,000 monthly searches, right? Within five hours guys, remember for one week, I was not ranked at all in the top 306 for this keyword after adding it to the title. All right. I went from unranked to page one, position 27 within just a few hours of that title, updating it on Amazon three days later, no search find buy or anything like that.

Bradley Sutton: It jumped up to page one, position two guys. The title and phrase form is super important. Super, super important. All right. Another one, I had that I didn’t have in the title. All right. Same exact thing. It went from unranked to page one, position 20, and this was a keyword that again had 10,000 searches. So, in the first couple weeks of a listing guys, the keywords you have in phrase form in your title are of utmost importance, in my opinion, all right. Not only if you’re trying to do search find buy, but especially if these keywords are related to others products that are very similar to your product and if they done well for those products, because remember what am Amazon doesn’t have much information when you first launch a product, all right, Amazon doesn’t know what you’re going to be good at and what you’re not going to be good at. Right. They have limited data. So if you guys remember in my hemp cream case study, you guys remember how I got indexed for those forbidden keywords, without those keywords in my listing, CBD remember? CBD related keywords, I got indexed for all of those. How did I do that? What I did was I looked at the top performing keywords or products for CBD related keywords. They didn’t have it in their listing either, but they were ranked highly for it. And I try to take some of their keywords from like their title and other keywords that they’re ranking really highly for. And I would place it in various spots in my listing in hopes that Amazon is going to relate me to those products. And then go ahead and start showing me for PPC for these CBD related keywords, even without it in my listing. And sure enough, it did it. That was almost kind of like why I came up with this as part of the idea for Maldives. I was like, yeah, that’s great for forbidding keywords, but what if Amazon works like that with other keywords too, since it has such few data points to look at, maybe it’s looking at the main keywords in your title. If another product that it was is very similar to yours did really well for that. They might give you the benefit of the doubt during this Maldives honeymoon period in, and sure enough, that’s what seems to, again, I’m not going to try and explain that I hack the system and I have definitive proof. I can only tell you what the data is showing me. And so far, my theory has seems to be correct based on the data on my test.

Bradley Sutton: So guys, I’m still in the midst of about three or four more launches and the same things. It worked like, I’m talking about keywords that have 10,000 searches and I do like four and five units of search find buy. And I’m getting to page one because I’m putting all these things into practice. So, let’s just briefly review. Is there a formula guys that can help you crush it at a fraction of your cost? No, I’m not going to sit here and try and say that I have a formula, but things that are important, number one, search volume, yes. Still is important. You can’t give two units away for a 1000 search volume keyword and two units away for a hundred thousand search one keyword and expect the same results. All right. If all things are considered equal. Number two, title, title, title, title. Title is super important, guys. The keywords that you have both in your canonical URL, which is those, hopefully those first keywords that you have in your listing followed by a dash. Those are super important. And just anything phrase form in your title. And even if you only had, can fit components of keywords in your title, it’s still really seems to send those relevancy signals to Amazon. And it especially is even easier. A lot of these keywords or a lot of these products, very, very few products had these keywords that I targeted in their title in phrase form. All right. Very, very few of them. They were indexed for them. They were performing well for them. They were on page one, but they didn’t have it in their title. So to me, in my opinion, that gave me an advantage because I put them in my title. So, if you have a keyword, be it coffin shelf, be it Gothic decor or wherever, go to Xray on Helium 10, and hit Xray and then download it into an Excel file. And then just do a control F in Excel and search for how many times those keywords are in the organic ones, not in the sponsored ones, but in the organic listings. And if you can find a keyword that searched highly and only like maybe two or three listings on that page, even have it on there in their title.

Bradley Sutton: That is part of what I’m calling the Maldives honeymoon, because you can take advantage of that. And it’s going to be a little bit easier to get to page one. Other things that I have been doing on almost all of these is I do not create the listing until I’m ready to turn sales like on the next day for my fulfilled by merchant. All right. So a lot of you guys can’t do that because you don’t have a third-party warehouse or you don’t have a warehouse at your own house where you can send it to yourself first. But, if you guys have that, I would suggest not creating the listing first, if you have that capability and it’s no different to you, might as well, don’t do it until you actually have to create the listing. And then if you’re doing search find buy right off the bat dude, off of your fulfilled by merchant two, all right. And if you start getting sales within 24 hours of listing, actually going live, in my experience that also helps the algorithm. Now I have heard of people still getting these kinds of crazy Maldives Honeymoon, like experiences without doing that, like where they create the listing maybe two months ago, but then they suppressed it and then they put the, I forgot what it’s called, but like the launch date for the inside, the edit listing, they put the launch date for like way in the future. And they got kind of that Maldives Honeymoon effect. I haven’t tested that myself, so I can’t speak to that, but I’ve heard of that happening. I think Anto was what was one who told me about that, that working for her now, the other thing is that, again, going back to the title is that Amazon really, really values the keywords you have in phrase form in your title.

Bradley Sutton: And to me that’s proven by that whole backend access that I found where they have that full ranking system about it. And then just based on all of these tests where it’s just obvious to me, in my opinion, that Amazon is really highly valuing, those keywords that you have in phrase form in your title. The other thing about the title is, look again at how many products on page one of a certain search term have that exact search term in phrase form in the title. And sometimes that’s a good indication. Like if you were to look at that collagen peptides, guess what? Probably like 75, if not 90% of the listings on page one, all have collagen peptides in phrase, formula listing, all right. When we launched the Project X coffin shelf, how many had it? Only one. Only one had it. All right. So it was super easy for us to rank. And in addition, not just the keywords and phrase form, but relevant keywords. All right. So do multi launches, like launch for four or five keywords with small amounts, but really be strategic about it. Like have it, the suffix or the prefix of a keyword being the same, like egg holder wooden egg holder, Easter egg holder, et cetera. But then you take it a step farther, the Maldives way that I’m teaching here, you take it a step farther and say, all right, what is the keyword that products who perform well for wooden egg holder also perform well for, even if it’s not related directly to what an egg holder, those are keywords that you should launch to, or try and launch for. And you might get some added love from Amazon. At least that’s what I’m seeing in my experience.

Bradley Sutton: So guys, like I said, this is an ongoing thing. I’m still going to work really hard at really trying to crack the code. But I hope I gave you guys some things that can help you with your launch. And at first, I want to have like a celebrity on episode 200, you guys remember who was on episode 100 of the Series Sellers Podcast. It was Helium 10’s founders, Manny and Gui, I’m like, I want to go big and, and we’re going to try and get like, um, Damon John to be on here or something. But I was like, you know what, he’s great to have. And that’s definitely worthy of episode 200, but at the end of the day, remember what the serious sellers podcast is all about. It’s about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the Amazon world. And that’s kind of like what I want to focus on, you know? Yeah. It’s great to have a celebrity. I’m sure I’ll have celebrities on here, but the real celebrity of this episode is not necessarily our guests. It’s definitely not me, but it’s the information that we go over in this episode that can help you guys crush it. That is the celebrity in these episode. And so, I wanted this to be a special one for episode 200. That’s why I’m here in the Maldives here. And I hope that this information can help you guys. I would love you guys to start testing some of this stuff out. Let me know what works, what doesn’t work for you and let me know the different steps. I’m still testing out myself and as I get more information, I’ll continue to release it in blogs and podcasts and the like, all right, real quick, this is a very relevant time to do my BTS, which is Bradley’s 30 seconds.

Bradley Sutton: My 30-second tip for the day is how am I here in Maldives? Did I tell Helium 10 to pay and fly me across the world? Just so I can this podcast episode, no, I paid for this completely out of my pocket. And so, my 30 seconds today is about a travel hack. I’m going to definitely be talking about more about travel hacks in blogs and feature episodes. But how did I pay for this number one, as I said before, and one of my BTS is use your credit card for your PPC, alright use your credit card for your PPC. So you get points. I paid this with the Chase Sapphire credit card, and I got business class, business class to come here. I didn’t pay anything for business class either way. That’s like a $5,000 round trip ticket. This room that I’m in here right here is a 22 to $2,500 a night. I paid zero. I’m only here one night. I use a voucher and that’s from a different credit card, the Hilton American Express card. So, I pretty much got this entire trip for free because of how I’m working my credit card points. So, that’s my BTS of the day is guys make sure that you use credit cards that work for you. Anyways, guys, thank you very much for tuning in and I’ll see you guys on the next episode.