#623 – From Amazon Influencer To Amazon Seller

Gracey Ryback from Deal Cheats, the TikTok and Amazon Live sensation with over a million followers reveals her transition from a successful influencer/content creator to Amazon seller in our latest episode. Gracey shares how her initial venture into sourcing products from China provided key insights, eventually leading to a strategic pivot towards U.S.-based suppliers. Her story is not just about product sourcing, but about understanding the intricacies of e-commerce from a seller’s perspective, enabling her to connect deeply with other aspiring entrepreneurs in the industry.

Forget traditional advertising methods—Gracey explains why she swerves around Amazon PPC, favoring the power of external traffic and influencer marketing to launch products organically. We dissect her strategies for breaking into saturated markets, utilizing influencers and deal sites to propel organic traffic and product visibility. With practical advice on setting lucrative discounts that draw customers while keeping profit margins healthy, Gracey provides a replicable blueprint for launching products without sacrificing profitability.

Dive into the world of influencer marketing on Amazon as Gracey discusses the tools and platforms that make content creation and brand collaboration seamless. From Helium 10 Xray’s influencer mode to utilizing other platforms, Gracey shares how repurposing content can maximize reach and revenue. Balancing the demands of being a creator and Amazon seller isn’t easy, but with Gracey’s insights on work-life dynamics and leveraging multiple platforms, listeners will gain valuable knowledge on how to thrive as both a creator and a seller.

In episode 623 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Gracey discuss:

• 00:00 – Gracey’s Amazon Selling Journey
• 06:59 – Organic Product Launch Strategies
• 08:53 – Uniqueness and Potential for Success
• 13:01 – Product Promotion and Brand Expansion
• 15:10 – Maximizing Influencer Income on Amazon Live and TikTok
• 18:10 – Best Helium 10 Tools For Amazon Sellers
• 25:53 – Alternative Revenue Streams for Creators 
• 26:05 – Creator’s Work-Life Balance and Platforms
• 28:48 – Daily Routine and Content Creation
• 34:10 – Influencer Tools for Amazon Success

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today we’ve got the queen of TikTok back on the show, with over 1 million followers now Gracey from Deal Cheats, and she’s going to talk about all the different ways that she’s been making money as an influencer and creator this year, as well as how she is actually now become an Amazon seller as well. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. Well, that’s a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world, and we have somebody on the show. She has many nicknames Queen of TikTok and all-knowing person. She has a lot of names out there, but we know her as Gracey here and this is the third time she’s been on the podcast. Gracey, welcome back.

Gracey:

Hello, Bradley, we’re back. Happy to be back.

Bradley Sutton:

We are back. Yes, and I just changed my background to a little pink, pinkish light, since she’s got the lighting going on over there. Love it, Love it. This is the third time I said that she’s been on the podcast. So for those of you who want to go get a little bit more of her backstory, we’re not going to do too much of that today. For those who are ready to listen to it, go back to episode 360. Well, that’s a cool number. I didn’t realize you were on 360. 360 and then 498. I’m not sure what episode number this is going to be. We’re in the 600s by now, but 498, we talked about, you know, TikTok shop. You know TikTok shop wasn’t even a thing the first time he came on the podcast, and so, yeah, we’re definitely going to talk about that. But before I get into that and I don’t know what you’re going to answer here, because you know me like I don’t want to even want to think about what we’re going to talk about, I just want it to come out organically and I told you I was like no, no, don’t, don’t tell me anything about this, but I want to know you actually started selling on Amazon this year, right?

Gracey:

I did. I did earlier this year, so it’s been a good couple of months that I’ve been selling.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, All right. So, like you’ve just been hanging out with Amazon sellers for like 2-3 years now and you’re like I got to do this myself.

Gracey:

Well, it was. You know, I was on the other side of things, so I was on, like, the creator, the marketing, the external traffic side, driving traffic to Amazon listings. But I also do realize it was more of an intention of learning what the different parts of selling on Amazon encompassed, more than it was like oh, like, let me just start selling, cause it’s easy or fun or whatever. Like I think everyone who sells on Amazon knows. Like it’s no walk in the park. But it was more of like a learning experience of like let me see what I have to go through, let me understand what everyone’s talking about so I can better understand the other side of what I do.

Bradley Sutton:

Exactly. You know, like that’s why I started selling on Amazon actually because I was a consultant for Amazon sellers before I worked at Helium 10. So I kind of knew how things worked and everything. And then I stopped that because I was like, all right, Helium 10 is all my focus and I was like, wait a minute, they want me to be in this like educational or an educator. Like I cannot do this if I’m not in the game. I got to experiment with stuff. I got to be able to empathize with people. Now tell me, has that kind of like opened up? Like your eyes, like do you see things in a different perspective now when you speak to Amazon sellers? Like you’re coming from a, a place of like empathy a little bit more and stuff.

Gracey:

Oh, absolutely. So. A big part of it, I think, is just the profit margins that I think I’m understanding. Now a lot of times, you know, I do deals so I’m like, oh, just set up a 50% off discount, but that’s until I realized I was like. Oh, that’s a complete loss, like that’s like just not possible for a lot of the US based sellers. So that was something that I knew but also maybe needed to do it myself to like, realize and understand.

Bradley Sutton:

Your product did you manufacture in China? Made in USA? Where did you get it from?

Gracey:

So it is. It is sourced from China, but also right now, that was a starting point, because you know the purpose of me starting to sell. It was just a learning process, more than like a making money type of project. So I kind of did it the way that I feel like the majority of sellers start selling potentially when they’re doing private label, which is sourcing from China, and like turning it into something like more private label. So that is the format I started with. However, I’m doing more US based sourcing now for both like quality and, I think, just shipping time reasons.

Bradley Sutton:

So hold on the first product sourced in China about how much did you invest? Five grand, 10 grand, 20 grand?

Gracey:

Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

One of those numbers thousands of dollars.

Gracey:

You said it. Yeah, yeah, one of those numbers, for sure.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay.

Gracey:

It was not like a small amount, like that’s. That’s something that people have been saying for a while now. It’s like if you want to be successful on Amazon, you’re going to need the capital.

Bradley Sutton:

Is it that product You’re like? Hey, let me, instead of keep keeping going uh, importing from China, I want to start uh sourcing that exact product here in the United States. Or are you like expanding out your line? And now you’re looking at US as a source more expanding.

Gracey:

So I think, um, there are parts of this product that are just not profitable. If you were to source from the U S especially when you compare them to the prices of the market competitors, like how am I going to be priced at double the price of a product that somebody could get the exact same product of? So with that in mind, I’m kind of expanding and growing into just different, different versions of the product and like upgraded versions as well, and I think part of it, part of launching, was just like understanding what the market was like, what kind of sales is going to get, how is this going to be met by the buyers. And that was kind of the data that I wanted before I expanded. And now we’re in like the expansion part where I know like this does well and like there’s a market for this and now I can successfully do this expansion.
 

Bradley Sutton:

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Gracey:

Okay, so big W in my humble opinion. I really really wanted to just again learning process and like testing. I wanted a organic PPC free lunch and I know that so many people I’ve maybe brought this up to or like ran the idea by them kind of laughed at me and was like ha, like in your dreams, like good luck with that one. But I did it, I did it, I did it and it’s going well and I’m ranked very, very, very well for the keywords that I want to rank for, and I think the PPC is, like I’m realizing, not a part that I can like keep out of forever. It’s definitely like a piece of the pie when you are selling on Amazon, at least to some extent.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, hold on. Did you say you’re not doing PPC or you are doing PPC?

Gracey:

I recently. I’m exploring it, but like.

Bradley Sutton:

But when you launch, you didn’t do PPC?

Gracey:

Oh, none at all.

Bradley Sutton:

Hold on, okay. Okay, see I, that just totally went over my head there. I wasn’t even paying attention. Um, okay, because I was like well, why are people making fun of you for organically launching with PPC, like that’s how everybody launches? So did you get into something that was like there wasn’t much competition out there, or there was.

Gracey:

I would say like it’s pretty competitive. Most people who are like in the category or like know about it. They’re like oh, good luck with that one. It’s very saturated.

Bradley Sutton:

So then, what was one of your things like? Did you send some traffic there, like outside of Amazon? Did you get other influencers to promote it? 

Gracey:

Yes, yes, yes. My knowledge of influencer marketing, I applied it, and I worked with influencers and I basically tried to do as much external traffic as I could without any PPC, just through influencer marketing, and that was kind of the thing that I wanted to just potentially see if it was possible. 

Bradley Sutton:

You know, obviously you know, like I’m not, you know you haven’t been in the amazon space for too long. But, like you know, like five, six years ago you know the way that people would rank. It wasn’t necessarily through PPC, like you could do without PPC, but it was because you would use these services where people would send traffic from off of Amazon to certain you know like two step URLs to rank for certain keywords, or sending people to actually literally search for a keyword and then they would get a rebate and stuff like that. But you’re just saying, hey, influencers, organically pushing the product, not even trying to, like you know, gain the system with keywords, but it actually helped your organic ranking for some of your main keywords because Amazon recognized what your main keywords are and they saw that, hey, this product is pretty successful, decent conversion rate, so it just organically moves you up the rankings. Is that kind of like a accurate assessment.

Gracey:

That’s it, yep.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. Awesome. I tell everybody that you’ve got to use your own. What’s the word I’m looking for? Um, not necessarily expertise, but everybody has something special that they have that other people don’t and a lot of people don’t realize what it is. You know, um, you have a big network right, so I’m assuming you use that and there’s nothing wrong with that. But, like, how much of what you did could actually a regular person not the queen of TikTok do? You know obviously, you’ve got things you know, like I saw on your Instagram last week. You’re in, you know, New York. You’re rubbing shoulders with celebrities and famous people and obviously you know. You just tell one of them hey, promote my product, and you get thousands of views. Somebody like me probably couldn’t do that. I don’t rub shoulders with celebrity. You’re like the closest celebrity I rub shoulders with here, but you know. So, forgetting those kinds of things like what is something that? Hey, you did it, but literally I could do it. Literally, somebody who’s listening could probably do the same thing.

Gracey:

Great question. I took this into account. So I wanted I did not want to use my own personal platform to promote this, so I didn’t, because I wanted to know yeah, seriously, I did not use my own platform, I did not like make, I didn’t make any pieces of content myself about this product, so I really wanted to just create something that I could do for somebody else or that anybody else could do anybody else who like. First of all, I have never, ever, ever gone to any of my friends, creators, influencers, anyone famous and be like here’s my product. I would never do that, not to say that it’s not –

Bradley Sutton:

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

Gracey:

No, nothing wrong with that. But I didn’t want to use like a network or friendships to be like “Oh hey, you’re an influencer, why don’t you do this?” cause seen that happen and like not a bad idea at all if you have that, but obviously not everyone can do that. I wanted to do something replicable. That was the whole thing. So I literally used sites that bring organic traffic brand referral bonus program. I used those external traffic. I use deal sites like all of this in combination, a bunch of different sources. I also set up a deal like so I was taking advantage of like the deal marketing which I, you know, do. So that is kind of the strategy behind it, but I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t using things that only I had access to.

Bradley Sutton:

Did you put a 50% coupon out there, like you used to tell people to do, or did you go a little bit more conservative?

Gracey:

I think the discounts that I would be setting up would be between 30% and 50% off, and that is just what I’ve seen to work best. I also, of course, took that into consideration when I was figuring out what I wanted to sell. I wanted something that I was able to build that margin into, so I can set up a 50% off discount code if I needed to and still be profitable. So that is something I had to consider.

Bradley Sutton:

Interesting, and that is, yeah. Like for the, the most of us, like I think we probably would do those kinds of discounts, but actually for me, if I did that on mine, I would probably lose money, which I’d be okay with. Like for me, I’m okay with losing money when I’m trying to launch and get that initial momentum, but obviously the ideal thing is to go ahead and get a percentage that not only works but it also makes you, or still allows you, to be profitable. So it sounds like you were able to do that.

Gracey:

Exactly. And the other thing is, I think, um, my, one of my strategies is like the, the secret promo code. It’s like it’s not a price drop, it’s not a coupon, it’s not a seven day deal, it’s not a lightning deal. It’s literally you might have a price drop if you want, but there’s a secret promo code that is not publicly visible on the listing and then you’re basically just using it for external traffic and these are just select deal sites or influencers or groups of people that you’re sharing this code on, and all of those are external sales that boost the ranking. So maybe you’re, you know, breaking even or even at a loss for those specific sales, but every one of those sales is organic, it’s external specific sales, but every one of those sales is organic, it’s external.

Bradley Sutton:

What did you use? The social media coupon or just the private uh, the uh, private uh discount, where it’s just a code but it doesn’t show up on the page?

Gracey:

Just the code doesn’t show up on the page, which I guess you could technically also do that with like a social media promo code.

Bradley Sutton:

I actually don’t like those social media, like I forgot what it was, but I had an issue with that one time I tried to run it. I think it was because I couldn’t get like a strike through pricing or whatever it is. But I try not to use the social media coupon code. But then this discount was only for you know the deal sites and things like that. Now, how many units did you kind of like target for or set aside uh, you know, for these promotions?

Gracey:

Honestly because, again, this wasn’t like a money grab. I understood that this was potentially just a learning experience, so I didn’t on purpose set aside any exact amount of units that I wanted to sell with this. It was more like as many as possible. Let’s see what happens to the ranking.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, makes sense. Makes sense. These products that you’re trying to source now it’s going to be under the same brand as what you your first product was?

Gracey:

I think so. Yeah, I think so. It’ll just it’s like the similar, similar product, so it wouldn’t make sense to like start a whole new. yeah, yeah. 

Bradley Sutton:

Well, let’s go ahead and switch to like the creator side and your bread and butter. What have you been doing recently that’s new? What did you stop doing? You know, like we’ve talked in the past about just you know you had Instagram channel, I believe YouTube. You were doing Amazon live I don’t know if you were doing any TikToK lives, but what’s new on your creator front?

Gracey:

So creator funds, I took a little time away from Amazon live but I’m getting back into it. I think just you know those situations where, like, you kind of dread something but then you, you stop doing it and you’re like wait a second, I kind of miss it. So, I wanted to get back into Amazon live, but I think obviously the big thing of the last year is TikTok shop and so there’s a lot that I’ve been doing both on the creator side. I’ve been working a lot with the TikTok team. Understanding the creator side, there’s this really cool program where they just take creators some of, like, the first people to like do really well with the content creation, like they created a group of creators and they’ve been hosting events, just giving them a lot of educational webinars and tools and incentives, and basically they want to take this group of creators and basically have them trained, ready to go and be available to brands who are wanting to, you know, find creators. So I really like the education and the support that TikTok has been giving creators and it’s really made me motivated to want to do more for TikTok shop, both live and short video and obviously I think we’ve all been seeing people talk about it, see the success from it and see the potential from it, so that is definitely highlight of the last year. I’ve also been like working with helping brands get set up. It was a brand I’ve been working with. We got a couple viral videos and it was just like really cool to see the behind the scenes of that, see you know how many sales happen and then see all these creators and other TikTok shop affiliates just like all of a sudden want to work with a product. Obviously, when you start on TikTok shop, you’re going to have to gain that traction, get those first pieces of content and like maybe nobody’s ever heard of your product, maybe nobody knows about it. There’s like no volume there, but it’s cool to like get the ball rolling and then see how it snowballs.

Bradley Sutton:

In the past, I didn’t think about it this way. You know, like, I kind of felt like it was two totally different trajectories Somebody being an influencer, slash creator, as opposed to somebody being a seller. Obviously, you’re breaking boundaries. Already yourself, you went the opposite way, but now I look at it more and more that you know, like, like you said you might, you had to invest thousands, over $5,000 into your product. The fact of the matter is, a lot of us out here we don’t have $10,000 or whatever to just drop on a product, and I feel that now, being an Amazon influencer or a TikTok influencer or whatever, some kind of affiliate program, that could be a way that somebody, without having to invest money, can actually start to make money. And actually, you probably didn’t know this, but even Helium 10, our regular tool in our Chrome extension, we actually have an influencer mode for the Chrome extension. And then what it does on Amazon, instead of like, seeing all the details that are important for Amazon sellers, it’s showing all the details are important for Amazon influencers, like, how many videos are in the upper carousel on the on the on the page? How many are in the lower carousel? What’s the percent of commission for affiliates? What’s the percent of commission for influencers? And so now people can, you know, influencers can use our tool to do that, because people don’t realize that this is a you know like you invest nothing. You know like you’re just reviewing products that you maybe have already bought or you’re already, that you were going to buy anyways. And yeah, you know, it’s not like you’re going to make a million dollars off of all these videos, but you know, your video on the top carousel and people, that’s what they see is the last video that they see before they buy their product. You’re getting like you know one, two, three, whatever you know percent commission and that can add up on some good selling products.

Gracey:

Absolutely, and I think the shop will video era. It’s like it’s still continuing. Of course it’s getting a lot more saturated and competitive with and there’s parts of it that are kind of out of our control. That might be a little bit frustrating, but for the most part you’re totally right about that. If anybody out there wants to be a creator slash influencer, like affiliate thing, think about it. When you’re talking about selling, you have the capital, you have the PPC costs, you have countless other costs that you have to invest into it and then what you’re getting back is like a slim margin of profit. But when you’re promoting products, getting the affiliate commission, like, most of the time the only investment you might have to make is like if you’re looking for a specific product that you want to talk about or promote or have and you buy that, but a lot of times there’s no investment, there’s no official investment. Like, look around your house, like you have things that are sold on Amazon. You can get started and then you can kind of reinvest your earnings as you go. But I do think that Helium 10 influencer tool amazing, so helpful of the millions of products on Amazon. We do need to do product research of like what’s worth investing our time in. So like huge tool. Love that.

Bradley Sutton:

If you guys are, you know, haven’t tried it out, or you don’t know how to use it, or you just you don’t know much about the Amazon Influencer Program. If you’re a Helium 10 member and you’re listening to this, go into your dashboard and hit under the big menu under learning. I literally didn’t even see this until this second here and I can’t share my screen. I’m on the wrong video here, but it’s called Amazon Influencer Bootcamp. It’s like maybe a one-hour course or something. Take that, it’s completely free. It’s right in your dashboard Amazon influencer bootcamp and learn a little bit more about it now. Are you on the Amazon side? You said you had taken a little step back from lives in the past. Were you still doing any shop or any of these videos or were you generating any kind of creator income on on Amazon, like last year?

Gracey:

So, you’re talking about like just on-site stuff, aka lives or shoppable videos, not counting affiliate links, right?

Bradley Sutton:

Let’s go with that first. Like, were you? Maybe the answer is no. Like were you doing any of that stuff last year?

Gracey:

Yeah, so, um, from the live streams. What I, what I did, was actually I would take a live stream that would probably be like an hour and a half to two hours long. I’d probably go through 20 products within that one and a half to two hours and then I would chop them up into individual shorts and I would like actually upload those videos as shopable videos to Amazon, to my storefront, and repurpose my live streams. That way it would save me a lot of time of, like, not repeating myself and doing a product and I’m already doing it anyway and I have the footage and why not use it. And then Amazon came out with a really cool tool. It’s called Clips, which is exactly what you think it is. It’s taking a live stream, cutting it up into clips and then being able to, like, use those as shopable pieces of content. So that’s what.

Bradley Sutton:

I did Hold on. Can you explain that a little bit? So if I take like, like you said, you’ve got a video. You did live. It’s got 20, 20 products on there. So using the clips, let’s say you, you, you reviewed this, this uh water bottle here and that was one of the 20 products. The clips cuts it. And then now what happens to that clip of this water bottle video? It goes onto the listing of this water bottle as a regular, like a influencer affiliate video.

Gracey:

Potentially so. All I can do in my power is, you know, create the clip, upload it to my storefront tag, the product ASIN, and then put it into like the universe. And if Amazon wills it, it’ll show up on the product page. I’ll earn commission. If Amazon doesn’t will it, then it will sit on my storefront and drive traffic to my storefront and it’s still like a shoppable page but I’m typically not driving traffic to my storefront, so it’s probably going to sit yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, that’s interesting. That’s another use case I never even thought about. You know like I might need to revise the Amazon Influencer Bootcamp here, because I was mainly thinking of all right, you just go ahead and look around your house at what you’ve bought and then do a video and then upload it. But that’s interesting If somebody is doing Amazon lives. It’s like you know, it’s what Gary Vee says. You know repurpose, repurpose, repurpose. You know repurpose, repurpose, repurpose. You know like don’t do things five times over again, just do it once and then repurpose it five times. So, that’s pretty cool that Amazon has that as an option.

Gracey:

Yeah, yeah, and I actually was doing this before the clips feature came out, so really I was just Amazon has an option where you can download the entire live stream. You don’t even have to record it from the streaming software, you download the entire live stream. I was using CapCut just to like chop it up. I would take out the parts where I was like, oh it’s this price, oh it’s on this deal. I would take out anything time sensitive. That’s like, really important, make it evergreen, make it very, just, just about the product, and I would upload it. And I probably did a couple hundred videos from my live streams that way. That was probably a lot of time do if I had to do it again?

Bradley Sutton:

But now that you’re saying that the clips thing kind of like takes away the need for CapCut.

Gracey:

Sometimes I still prefer CapCut because I can kind of chop out the parts that I need to. If you’re not talking about price and you’re just talking about product, I think clips is like much faster and much easier. But because I had parts where I was like talking with the chat, just having like stupid conversations off to the side or like just mentioning funny stories that probably weren’t funny but like I was just talking like chitter chattering. So I had a lot more like little pieces that I had to like watch really closely and then cut out manually.

Bradley Sutton:

And you were doing this all on your own, you weren’t like having a virtual assistant or anything do it?

Gracey:

Probably silly of me, but yeah. 

Bradley Sutton:

All right cool. Some people like to control their own stuff. As long as you can, you know, do it save. Save some money instead of having to hire, hire somebody you keep everything. Now, what about on TikTok? How are you making your money from what you do on TikTok? Because that’s where you have the most followers, right? How many followers are you up to now on TikTok?

Gracey:

1.1 million.

Bradley Sutton:

1.1 million. So, are you using just Amazon affiliate links and send them to Amazon? Are you making TikTok commission like doing the TikTok shop, sending people a TikTok shop? What’s the kind of like division of income on TikTok?

Gracey:

The climate of TikTok. So basically, ever since TikTok shop became more relevant. So I want to say, like within the past year, really, I think the whole goal of TikTok shop was to keep users on the platform. So obviously, here I am like go over to Amazon, like TikTok, hating it. So funny story about that because very recently, within the last couple of weeks, there’s been a new program where TikTok allows you to link affiliate links within the video that actually drive off the app. It’s in beta, it’s only for certain creators. It’s very interesting because it’s literally designed to shop from TikTok but like to take people to Amazon or take people to Target or whatever retailer. It was like it’s designed to drive people off the app. I don’t know what will happen with that. I don’t know if it’s permanent, I don’t know if it’ll roll out to everyone, but just like interesting that TikTok is becoming more open to driving off the app. Another thing I realized yesterday. I think I was looking for like travel deals or something on Google, and I was just googling and kind of halfway down the page it was oh, here are videos about what you’re searching for, and it was like just a row of TikTok videos that were about the travel deals, and so I realized the Google search results were driving to TikTok videos. So that just emphasizes.

Bradley Sutton:

On the desktop or on a phone.

Gracey:

Both Well.

Bradley Sutton:

I was on my phone.

Gracey:

Well, yeah, I was. I was actually on my phone, good point. So that just emphasizes how important it is to keep your videos evergreen and make sure they’re SEO-ed well.

Bradley Sutton:

Yep, yeah, SEO-optimized, I think, is the word you’re looking for Optimized. Or has good SEO. It’s your TikTok and your vocabulary lessons here on the Serious Sellers Podcast. Okay, so there’s TikTok. So then, are you still doing both Like? Is it 50-50? You’re trying to send people to Amazon and 50% like sending people back to TikTok shop, or what would you say the breakdown is?

Gracey:

 One thing is you can’t do both, and I tried doing both. I tried to make like an Amazon video and I tried to like link the TikTok shop products that were I was also like talking about, but I was like go to Amazon, I got a violation for that and it wasn’t. It was like a no, no, I don’t know if it’s like still the same way. It was a while ago and I didn’t try to like double down and like try it again.

Bradley Sutton:

Interesting. So TikTok like slap you on the wrist.

Gracey:

Yes, cause I was like driving to Amazon and also trying to like.

Bradley Sutton:

How dare they? The queen of TikTok slapping her on the wrist. The audacity that’s going on here.

Gracey:

I never tried to do it again after that. So if I make a video about Amazon, I’ll keep it Amazon, no mention of TikTok shop, no linking products. If I’m linking products, I’ll be like TikTok shop only no mention of Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

I also have no issues, since you’ve been doing it that way.

Gracey:

And I’ve also realized, whenever I do stumble upon like Amazon related content on TikTok, it’s typically not like going viral like it normally would have been back in the day, like Amazon content really slapped on TikTok back in the day, but now when I’m seeing it, it’s like it’s on my for you page maybe, but the views are very little, or maybe it’s not doing so well as it probably would have been, so I am clocking that as well.

Bradley Sutton:

Interesting, interesting, Okay, any other mediums that you are making money as a creator other than TikTok and Amazon affiliate program.

Gracey:

Yes, uh, first of all, disclaimer not sponsors, not an affiliate like, not an ad, please. Okay, so I will speak on really quickly. I know Levanta is kind of a new platform for both creators and sellers and I kind of chalked it off to one of those like oh, it’s just like creator connections, it’s just like. The premise of Levanta is like you get external traffic to your Amazon listing, they give you a link I think it’s like an attribution link the creator gets extra commission from the brand. So, as you know, amazon commission ranges between two to 4%, as low as zero percent very, very small numbers and hopefully you’re doing volume. That’s where you make the money. But if you’re not doing volume, like the numbers are not huge. It’s very like win-win situation and I was very casually just like using Levanta here and there and then very shocked at how much it was making and how well it was doing. And now I’m like really going full force into it. I’ve been using it probably since Prime Day in October, like as a creator. Yes, as a creator, not even as a brand as a creator. And it’s been going phenomenally well. And I want to like probably just emphasize, like sites like that, like Levanta, and there’s another one, Archer Affiliates we all know of, there’s a couple of new ones, wayward, and then Creator Connections on Amazon as well, but those, the big four you know like, use that as a brand to get the external traffic. If you have the margins, offer the extra commission to the creator and it’s like such a good win-win and it’s working out so much better than I imagined.

Bradley Sutton:

Now all the stuff we’ve been talking about your Amazon business, your creator program. Aside from your travels, which I know you travel a lot, a normal week when you’re at home, what’s the breakdown hours wise, like, how many hours are you putting on Amazon as a seller? How many hours are you creating content? I don’t know what, what else there is. You know, like editing hour. You know I would call the editing hours, like you’re in CapCut and stuff. That’s the creating content, in my opinion. And then you know your analytics are looking for brands or whatever. So what would be the breakdown? I mean, totally, you’re working only 20 hours a week. You’re working 40 hours a week and 10 is this 30? Is that? What would you say?

Gracey:

A day in the life. A day in the life, all right. So what does my life look like? Um, I’d say I work late hours because sometimes I do have calls with people in like China, so you know, like the time zones are very off, so like a lot of times I’m sleeping very, very late. A lot of times I’m I probably haven’t gone to sleep before 2 am and in many no different. Yeah, so like I’m probably sleeping between like 2 and 4am.

Bradley Sutton:

I’m not that bad. Okay, that is a little bit different yeah.

Gracey:

And I wake up a little bit later in the day just so I can survive that. But then I think the first thing is like make a coffee, check my emails and then have any meetings I like getting. Do you ever have the feeling of like when you have like a meeting at like 4pm and you’re like I like getting. Do you ever have the feeling of like when you have like a meeting at like 4pm and you’re like I can’t do anything else? Today I have a meeting at 4pm.

Bradley Sutton:

And then it’s like a Korean drama right after that.

Gracey:

Right, I’m a victim of that. So I like meetings and emails before noon, preferably. Here we are at like 3pm, but like taking the afternoon time and creating content is one of those things where, like, if you, if you don’t create content, you’re probably like this this is so easy. How could anyone, dare you know, make this 30 second video and like take more than a minute making it? So there’s like a whole process to making just one 30 second video. There’s like the research of like brainstorming, and then, if you’re working with a brand, there’s like the concept that you have to fill out of like where are you filming? What are your ideas? What’s your script like are there any other people? What music are you using, like talking points? And then you have to fill that out, get approval if you’re working with a brand. But typically if you’re just making a video, there’s the brainstorming. There. I never script anything. I’ve never. I’ve never found any uh benefit to like reading off a script or like thinking about what I’m going to say before I say it. I usually just don’t think and talk. So there’s the brainstorming, there’s the actual filming and then there’s the editing, and then there’s the posting, and then, once you post, you got to think about repurposing of like okay, I’m posting on TikTok, I’ll repost to Instagram or Pinterest or Amazon or Reels, Facebook Reels and like all these other platforms. So repurposing does take a bit of time. I know there’s softwares out there for it, but there’s that. And then, of course, I’m on like seven, eight different platforms, so got to post my deals every day. And aside from that, there’s live streaming, which I do a couple times a week usually, and that is always an hour and a half to two hours, not to mention, maybe, the hour of prep beforehand, of just setting the products up, getting to know what the products are, figuring out if what’s on deal, what’s not on deal anymore, if it is expired or what not. So there’s a lot behind the scenes and I think there’s a lot of like coordinate, coordination, coordination, like yep, yep goes on. Not to like bore anyone. It’s really not that interesting. I’m not like just prancing around the world with celebrities, uh, except so then.

Bradley Sutton:

Like in a week, like I don’t think, like I don’t think you have any two days that are exactly the same um, or you’re in such a locked schedule, you know, even as you know the Amazon side, you probably go a couple days without even looking at it. You know, potentially um you don’t have any messages but like what is? What is it like? 80, 20, 80 being the 80% being the creator stuff and 20% Amazon? Is it 90, 10?

Gracey:

It really depends, because when I was, when I was first starting out, I was putting in a lot of time, I was having a lot of meetings, I was having a lot of like emails and coordination and just like back and forth. But then of course there’s like the kind of slower times where you’re maybe like waiting for stock. Maybe you’re low on stock because you’re selling out, but you don’t want to like push it because you don’t want to stock out. So I just kind of finished that like period of time where I was like waiting for the stock to drop and like now, right before Black Friday, cyber Monday, it’s like okay, marketing time, setting everything up, getting the deal set up and like all the things that encompass that. So there was like a slower period, but I would say typical day. There’s. There’s days where I obviously do more Amazon stuff than creator stuff, but I would say like 90, 10.

Bradley Sutton:

And then is it more than 40 hours a week or less.

Gracey:

My heart wants to say I never stopped working. My personal phone is my work phone, so I could be at in bed at 3am answering emails. I could be in bed like I could be watching TikToks at 3am, which is product research, so it’s like I’m never really not. I can never take a break from it. I’ve never turned my brain off to it. I haven’t taken a day off of posting or quote-unquote working.

Bradley Sutton:

Wait a minute. Wait a minute, really, like not even a day. Like you haven’t gone to Maldives for a couple of days and just try and disconnect.

Gracey:

I’ll be in the Maldives but I’ll be working in the mall,

Bradley Sutton:

Like, okay, you need to go to one. You see, you’re like me and this is what everybody tells me, like I need to go to. There’s like these places that people go to yeah we’re on purpose like there’s no internet connection, you know, like in Bali or somewhere where it’s not like, oh, the they’re technologically not advanced in this town. No, it’s like, literally on purpose, a place where people go like, hey, I need to disconnect, so I don’t even want to have the temptation of you know, the both of us need to go to some a place like that. t’s it sounds like because we’re both tied to our phones and stuff.

Gracey:

What a privilege it is to be able to disconnect huh like

Bradley Sutton:

Right, I wouldn’t know, but

Gracey:

I might be traveling, but like and like posting the highlights on my Instagram.However, know that in the morning I probably work for three hours and at night I’m panicking and pre-working for the next day. I might be looking like I’m having fun, but I’ll be at dinner or brunch with my friends working on my phone. My friends hate it and it’s really embarrassing. I don’t like it, but it’s what I signed up for what I signed up for.

Bradley Sutton:

So, yep, you know, I’m not sure when next year you can be able to come on the podcast, but, uh, I would like to. I would like to you to be able to say, hey, there was a few days where I was able to disconnect. That’s your homework. Uh, everybody else who’s listening to this podcast has a lot of homework to do as far as, like, hey, looking into this Amazon influencer program. You know, maybe TikTok influencer program and some of the other strategies you’ve talked about, but your homework is to get some days, some greasy days, off here.

Gracey:

No promises, but I’ll try.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, I was like this is sounding very noncommittal.

Gracey:

I’ll think about it for a second.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, all right, sounds good, all right. Um, what? When you were launching your Amazon business, what was your favorite? I’m assuming you use Helium 10. What was your favorite tool that you use in Helium 10 t hat helped you?

Gracey:

That’s right. Uh, yeah, well, I mean there’s, there’s tons, and Helium 10 is my favorite. Um, I really love that you guys do have an influencer tool, but that’s like so, like helpful.

Bradley Sutton:

It’s so nobody would ever thought, like two, three years ago, that Helium 10 is gonna have like an influencer tool. But hey, you’re part of the reason. You know, like, like, like you and others like you who have kind of like opened our eyes to, to this kind of stuff, are part of the reason that we do. 

Gracey:

And you saw the need for it and you did it and now it’s there. Now I think more, more creators need to learn about it, because I think I’ve seen a lot of creators like struggle of like this isn’t profitable. I’m putting in a lot of work but I’m not, you know, getting the return that I want. So, like tools like this are maybe the make or break of like what makes you profitable, what you spend more time on, and all that.

Bradley Sutton:

So a tip for newer influencers out there, newer creators like you know either a warning about hey, don’t fall into this pit hole, or a word of advice on something that they should focus on. What is it?

Gracey:

If you are going to become a creator, just know that you are probably going to get a lot of inquiries from all different angles. Your inbox is probably going to be full and you’re going to be asked to do A, B, C, D through Z every single day and it’s really really easy to get caught up in things that potentially will waste your time or not make you money or just take a lot of mental capacity of back and forth working with the wrong people and then like getting in your head about that I’m really big on. I fell into that like where I was probably taking on too much, saying yes to too much. I’m a people pleaser and I don’t like saying no to anyone, so that has probably got me in over my head and so I think just prioritizing what you want to focus on knowing that there’s limited time in the day and there’s also limited mental capacity of like everything you can do so you’ll be like inquired from all angles but just to focus on and take on what you can handle and what you actually want to do and what will move the needle, instead of saying yes to everything that comes your way.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome. All right, well, Gracey, every year you redefine yourself here on the show. This year you became an Amazon seller, so very excited to see next year, when you come back, what new things you have to share with us. Thank you so much for coming on and look forward to seeing you at an event soon.

Gracey:

Me too.

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