#403 – UGC And Image Optimization Tips for Amazon Sellers

Today, we welcome two guests who are respected in the Amazon-selling community, Anthony Cofrancesco and Ian Sells, to talk about the latest on using UGCs (User-generated content), their predictions for 2023, AI technology, optimizing your Amazon listings for better conversions, and strategies that you can implement to create immediate impact to your Amazon business. This is also the first episode where we introduce the SST or the Sixty-Second Tip and a new segment on the Serious Sellers Podcast where we talk about the favorite hobbies of our guests. So make sure to stay until the end!

In episode 403 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, Anthony, and Ian discuss:

• 02:00 – Amazon Predictions For 2023
• 04:00 – What Is The Best New Way To Launch Products?
• 06:15 – Strategies For Testing Creatives Before Launching Products
• 08:30 – What Are UGCs (User-Generated Content)?
• 11:00 – The Top Use Cases For UGCs For Amazon Sellers
• 14:30 – How Much Does It Cost To Produce UGCs
• 15:30 – What Is The Value Of Using UGCs For Your Amazon Brand
• 17:00 – What Should Amazon Sellers Focus On In 2023?
• 19:15 – Talking About AI Technology For Amazon Listing Images
• 21:00 – Using UGCs Outside Of Amazon
• 24:00 – Talking About Data Dive And It’s New Project Management Features
• 26:10 – Something You Can Implement To Make An Impact
• 32:20 – From TST to SST…
• 32:40 – Anthony’s 60-Second Tips
• 33:40 – Ian’s 60-Second Tips
• 35:40 – A New Segment Inside The Serious Sellers Podcast
• 39:00 – How To Get In Touch With Ian Sells
• 39:20 – How To Get In Touch With Anthony Cofrancesco 

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today we’ve got an awesome episode lined up with two individuals who are super respected in our industry, and they’re gonna be talking about the latest with using UGC for Amazon sellers, and also having your listings optimized, and much, much more. How cool is that? Pretty cool I think.

Bradley Sutton:

What were your gross sales yesterday? Last week. Last year. More importantly, what are your profits, after all, your cost of selling on Amazon? Did you pay any storage charges to Amazon? How much did you spend on PPC? Find out these key metrics and more by using the Helium 10 tool Profits. For more information, go to h10.me/profits. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Seller’s 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 e-commerce world. And we’ve got a couple of people who have helped countless, thousands of serious sellers out there over the years. There are no strangers to this podcast, Ian and Anthony, how’s it going?

Ian:

Great. Good to see you.

Anthony:

Hey, what’s going on everyone?

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. Awesome. Now we’re not gonna go too much into their backstories because we’ve kind of been there, done that. So if you guys wanna find out about their origin stories for Ian, make sure to check out episode 69 of the podcast. And for Anthony one of his latest ones was 292 as well. So I just wanna hop right into it, guys. We’re here at the end of December. And personally, I’m just gonna be a little bit hypocritical. I hate when people ask me to do predictions for 2023, that to me, that’s just so ridiculous. Like who are any of us, like, know what the heck is gonna happen, we don’t even know what’s gonna happen tomorrow on Amazon. They’ll go and change inventory restrictions when we thought they had all the inventory space in the world. But right off the bat, Ian, let’s start with you. If you were to if I was to put you on the spot, which I am, and say what would be an Amazon or e-commerce prediction for 2023, what would it be?

Ian:

I think we’re gonna see more of the same of what we saw this year. I think that things are gonna get a little bit easier on the shipping and continue that way. There are slowdowns. I think we know how to deal with all of this flu and Covid and all that stuff that’s going around, and it’s not so scary anymore. So a lot of the unknowns are kind of figured out. I think that we’re going to a period of time where consumer is unsure about their future. We think that it’s a recession, are we gonna see more of a recession? Are we already correcting? That’s to be determined. I, I think that there’s more to pain to come specifically in the real estate sector. So that’s gonna help that’s gonna actually steamroll into other things, right? People need places and money and not being sure. So I really think that it’s gonna be more the same, but it’s gonna be tougher in different ways. And it’s not gonna be about getting the product, but it’s about being able to get more sales and launching products and really having products that people need versus want.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Anthony, how about you?

Anthony:

I think we’re just gonna see another year of people really kind of tightening down their business and getting very efficient with how everything is run. Really just the people who are gonna win in the end, what they’re looking at in 2023 is like getting back down to the fundamentals. Increasing the overall profitability of the businesses, and then the scale of launches, right? And everyone’s gonna be working on the same kind of environment that most likely in the next year, things are gonna potentially start to get a little bit bad. And so I think everyone is now kind of looking in advance of that and trying to think of for next year, what can we do to keep growing the business in a profitable way?

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, absolutely. Now going back to you, Ian, it was a couple of years ago, but the topic of what we talked about was a lot about launches and things like that because you had had rebate key. So there are not many people in the industry who might have been maybe involved with as many launches as you and your team have. So we haven’t talked since the TOS change, but just in 2022. We’ve had pretty much a year now of the kind of like what the new normal is. The Amazon sellers that you talk to you yourself, what are you seeing as the consistent best new way to launch products and get to page one nowadays?

Ian:

Yeah, I mean, that’s a good question. It’s kind of all over the map. I said it before and I’ll say it now like it always needs to be natural. Amazon is always trying to combat every type of tactic by having an algorithm that kind of like legitimizes the process, right? Do these people want it? Were they in the market? Do they have the intent to buy? were they doing research or did they just buy right away? So again, it goes back to basically having a really organic approach at all this, and utilizing multiple different traffic sources and conversion tactics in order to really create that organic type of buying environment. But we’re still seeing launches from my side not from just rebate key, but like from just in general. Like, people are still thinking about how to launch because it’s so critical to your business, it’s critical to growth.

Ian:

You can’t just keep the same product live and just feel like that’s, that’s it, right? You have to bring new products to market. And the thing that Amazon makes it so difficult to tell you like, Hey, get your product out in front of customers and get exposure quickly. So the only way you have is PPC and lower your price until you’re losing money, and then you start raising your price and they start knocking you down. So I don’t think Amazon gives us really good tools, and so therefore sellers are looking out for other ways to create demand and create virality of their products.

Bradley Sutton:

Absolutely. Now we got kind of a unique pair here because both of you guys were involved in businesses that were very well known in the industry, and now you’re doing new things that we’re just definitely gonna talk about. But the same thing with you Anthony. You dealt with more like split testing and stuff having worked for PickFu in the past where you have more experience than the average person with testing creatives and testing ideas and, and, and things like that. You know maybe you’re not doing that on your day-to-day these days, but what about that kind of industry? Like what do you see as the general as a general trend as far as Amazon, and Walmart sellers who are like, “Hey, I don’t want to just launch from day one, and then just like, let’s see what the data shows and then pivot later.” How are you seeing sellers these days kind of like test creatives and things before they even launch?

Anthony:

Yeah, I mean, I think the big thing that everyone has to keep in mind about how the Amazon algorithm works is it’s all just based on performance, right? Like, Amazon has all of these people selling very similar products on their platform, and the algorithm from a ranking perspective in a really simple way, it just works that whoever has the best performance is gonna be the highest ranked, right? Really simplistic way of looking at it. And so, like what I’m trying to do when I’m looking at new launches or giving advice that people looking at launches is I wanna ask myself like, okay, there’s already a niche of already these established sellers selling a product. What’s the probability that I can come in and out of all of these people have at least the same performance, but ideally a higher performance in all of these people?

Anthony:

And so, like, I want to try to get a good idea of like, from a conversion standpoint, when I’m looking at a listing what’s the overall level of quality of these image galleries of the a plus content of the actual product detail page? And can I come in and actually do a lot better than that? And so I’m gonna like the testing in advance of seeing, like, getting a really strong idea of, do you think your creative team can actually execute on that? And if the answer to that’s no, then you probably wanna find a smaller niche that’s a little less competitive, you know?

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, yeah. Guys out there I’ve said it a million times like I said it four years ago, Hey, if you’re not using PickFu, you’re, you’re doing something wrong. And now PickFu is inside of Helium 10 called Helium 10 Audience, and if you’re selling private label and you launched a product without doing that I say there’s still a chance to go back and do it, guys, this is something that you, it’s an amazing, amazing resource. it was one of the most amazing things when I first came to Helium 10. I had never even heard of this kind of thing. And I was just like, guys if you’re not using this on your launches, you are leaving money on the table. Now we’re gonna switch to another topic that I think both of you guys might have some insights into, and especially Ian, cuz it’s kind of like what you do nowadays, but just right off the top we have so many three-letter things in the Amazon world today. Sometimes people get confused real basic, what does UGC stand for and what does it mean in the Amazon seller context?

Ian:

Yeah. So UGC is user-generated content, and it’s basically authentic content created by people who would actually be using your product, right? And it helps marketers connect with their audience and have a higher conversion rate and sell better. So when people use UGC in their listings, in their ads and we’re talking big brands too. They use real-life people the real world and road rules. These are all shows actually from my time, but like, we’re the original authentic content, right? And it’s just about like you can put a supermodel up there or a stock image, but people see past that and they really wanna see what they would look like, how they would feel when they use your products. And so usually see has become really important in the Amazon space. And that’s why I created joint brands and kind of got away from helping just Amazon sellers. We really focus on content for Facebook ads marketers, we agencies, and of course e-commerce brands as well.

Bradley Sutton:

Now Anthony, you’ve I’ve seen you speak at Billion Dollar Seller Summit in other places and you’re really big on like image optimization and, and listing optimization and things like that. What is your opinion on UGC I think a lot of people understand that, hey, if, if stuff is on TikTok and influencers are talking about my product, of course, that that’s great or on my website, but then sometimes Amazon sellers might not think of utilizing UGC actually as part of their listing? Is that something that you would suggest? And if so, how?

Anthony:

Yeah, when it comes to creative optimization, I always try to tell people I have no idea what’s ever gonna work. I just like to test a bunch of things and see what the numbers actually show. And so what’s really appealing about UGC is that’s probably the lowest-cost way to actually get creative assets. And like Ian was saying, a lot of people are actually gonna relate to it much more than if you’re doing a professional shoot or using stock photography. And so I know a handful of sellers that have whole communities of people that are just sending to a Google Drive, tons and tons of UGC that they can go and spin up into infographics trying their A+ Content. So if you can get real-life shots of people using the product in real life and you can match that too, okay, someone’s coming to your listing, they have a checklist of things in their head that they need to have checked off before they’re gonna convert, before they’re gonna add to the cart. Now if you have UGC, you have this whole pipeline of different positions, different angles, and different contexts of people using the product. That’s just a win for testing for me.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Now Ian, for me, I’m a rookie at this. I’ve dabbled a little bit in UGC but I would just, off the top of my head, I, I didn’t think about this beforehand, but if, if I’m just thinking about it right now, I think the most no-brainer things, like if I were to actually get serious and get started in this would be utilizing UGC for Amazon Post perhaps for the video, perhaps for the related videos on the bottom of an Amazon listing, I feel like there’s a no-brainer thing that I’m missing here. Oh Sponsored Video, potentially Sponsored Video Ads, like at least part of it. Would I just mention be the top use cases for Amazon sellers, or did I miss anything?

Ian:

We’ve identified nine places where you can use UGC. And we have a blog post about it, basically giving out the SOP on where to put them. But it’s, it’s question and answers. It’s, it’s in your you can upload videos, it’s Amazon posts for sure. If you’re not doing that, that’s free traffic for you. And then in your listing stack, right, your top list images you want to use UGC in representing how customers use the product, not how to stock photography. It looks way better. And you can use variations of it too for all skin types or for what however works for babies of all sizes. Like, these are things that you can do with UGC that you can’t do, like organically. Also the ads, the brand story, the EBC, I mean, it’s, it’s unlimited. Then on your website, your Facebook ads, your TikTok ads, all of that stuff is incorporating UGC in a holistic way.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Now stick to speaking with you for a minute here. Of these, I think in a perfect world, if we could do all of them, we would, and there are some sellers, we should be at a certain level be doing it. But like for newer sellers or, or maybe people in the middle ground like you gotta prioritize, like you can’t just spend a whole bunch of your entire budget and now you have no money for PPC. So like, if you were to rank like the top three where it’s like, hey, regardless of what level you are, start with this. If you can afford to do this and do this, like maybe the top three or four that they should focus on from what you just mentioned.

Ian:

Yeah, well, I’ll start with kind of what I and Anthony both know about, which is what my good friend Brian Kelsey always says when the, when the image, right? So that is the most important part, right? When somebody searches for a keyword and then scrolling down Amazon, what is the image that’s gonna get them to click? And I think PickFu and there are some other ones out there that are really good for winning the image, which is the customer gonna choose to click through to the next step is what happens after that. They’re gonna scroll through those images, so that’s gonna be even more important, right? Having a video that describes how the product works, how it feels, and how it’s gonna impact your life, is probably the next best place, right? Get a couple of videos that you can mash together into like a product demo video.

Ian:

And then lastly, I think EBC is important still is a good place to put UGC to show how many thousands of happy customers you might have and use UGC to represent that number, cuz by the number by itself doesn’t really connect. If you show, if you say a million happy customers and you have a hundred images of different people holding your product up, that’s gonna be really impactful and connect and go, oh wow, this is legit, like actual customers. And that’s what JoinBrands helps you do and scale, like really fast and easy is to get that content created in a systematic and programmatic way.

Bradley Sutton:

So for some of those things just have a ballpark. Even myself, I have no idea how much those kinds of things would cost. What is the cost of getting some like, I know it’s different, like if I’m trying to get like a UGC from somebody with 3 million followers, okay, that’s different. But just a rule of thumb starting out, like how much do some of those things cost?

Ian:

When we started the platform, we didn’t want to go into the influencer space right away because they, those people like wanna charge a lot of money. So we really have a lot of people of all different sizes. And so actually we set the prices on JoinBrands, so it’s $15 baseline for an image job, and that’s basically setting somebody a product and they’re gonna take a photo of it and then, then upload it to our site and you get to take it and use it however you want and get the image rights videos to start at $60, so really reasonable prices. And you can order 10 images for 150 bucks or 10 videos for 600 bucks and get a lot of variations from different people. And that’s really how JoinBrands works, right? It’s very systemized.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. And then one last question before we Anthony falls asleep over there is just like, can you just give me you don’t have to say the exact product or something, but to kind of illustrate the impact that this can have, can, can you talk about a customer’s case where, hey, this person didn’t have this and they spent a hundred bucks on this and their impressions went from here or some, something like that. Can you give an actual anecdote here so that people can understand that?

Ian:

Yeah, I mean it comes down to testing, right? It’s not gonna always be holding true, but when you look up like stats on UGC, it’s proven if convert four times higher, like for advertising, right? You can’t use UGC for your main image. So that’s hard to like say. But like, when you’re changing stuff on your listing if you add couple of extra images, if you, if you go from a 15% conversion rate to let’s say 18% conversion rate, you got up 3%, right? But that’s actually a 20% lift and increase in conversion. So out of 10 people, you just converted two extra people, right? Like it’s, it’s a lot of conversions that actually impacts your sales and that actually helps you really, sorry, it doesn’t add two people, but it’s a huge increase in conversion, right? So it’s important to do that because in order to rank on Amazon, in order to stay at the top, you have to convert better than the person below you.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, that makes sense. Makes sense. Now switching back to Anthony. The things that I think that win you prizes here and there when you go speaking and, and you get like top two or best in show, not best in show, isn’t that a dog show, but you get the favorite speaker is what you get sometimes. It’s when you’ve talked about like images and, and, and split testing and optimization. So just in general, what should sellers focus on in 2023? Because you do so much testing and you’ve seen so many things and that’s why you can speak from a place of authority, but, but how can people really make sure that they’ve got the listing that is gonna get them the best conversions?

Anthony:

For sure. I, what I can say is like well, and first off, the only reason I win any awards on this is cuz very few people talk about images. And the only reason I say that is because like, I’m not a creative person. I’ve only learned this and figured out what works here through pattern recognition. And so basically what I can tell the name of the game in terms of conversion optimization is you have to understand that when people go in, hey have the intent to buy the product 74% of the time, on average they will buy a product, it’s a question of if they buy yours or they buy something very similar. And so basically you have like this checklist of what the customer needs to know before they click add to cart, right? And then you have like everything on your product detail page and the more efficient you are at giving them everything on that checkbox, the higher the probability is that they’re gonna convert.

Anthony:

And so what I’ve really been spending a lot of time on and trying to come up with objective ways to test an image gallery is just the speed of comprehension. How quickly does someone go through the product detail page and their brain absorbs the information there and does that information their brain has absorbed, does it match the checkbox that on average people have? And so where people really go wrong on images, they try to get really fancy and this is why there are a lot of agencies that’ll do beautiful work, but it’s not about what looks good, it’s about the flow of information first, speed of comprehension. That’s the number one thing. Aesthetics is only beyond that. And so what I’ve been really pushing people to do is like to look at every image in the gallery, everything that you have, whether it’s an image or A+ that should have a specific purpose. And basically, as you try to test what is absorbed in the brain from this image versus what the customer actually get in the end, does that line up is gonna impact your conversion rate, if that makes sense?

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, absolutely. Now you’ve talked about this when kind of it was, is coming on strong, but for the last year it seems like technology as far as kind of like AI creation like DALL-E software and stuff like that has just like, I’m like, we are totally headed for Skynet or the Terminator world or something. It’s insane what is possible. I remember when it was just coming out when it was like still in beta, you were one of the first people to start talking about it, but now it’s been maybe half a year or something since it’s been out there. Have you actually started seeing Amazon sellers utilizing any of these tools to actually make some like lifestyle images for their products? Or is it still too new of technology to really understand how it’s gonna work for Amazon sellers?

Anthony:

I have, I’ve used it, and I know agencies that are using it. I know people that have actually put DALL-E photos onto their listing. The problem is that like DALL-E is really made for art, but I think one day someone’s gonna make a similar AI program. But for Amazon, the really cool thing about Amazon is if you break down images, everyone does the same thing. Like it’s the same exact format and template over and over of what works. And I think that’s where the real potential is, is if you train a program on what specific do you train it on Amazon image data, you’re gonna get a much different result than if you had an AI that was trained on art. So I think there’s a lot of potential, but generally, if you try to use DALL-E to create images, you’re gonna get real frustrating cuz it does, it’s not that simple. It’s not that good yet.

Bradley Sutton:

Especially when it comes with face or when you try and get the face in there, there’s some pretty scary stuff that comes out when you try and get people

Anthony:

Faces. Exactly. And the way I’ve figured out how to fix that is you just change all the prompts to be a photo from behind so that you don’t get any faces and it makes a usable lifestyle. It’s like better than what my agency would do for the price, which is basically free

Bradley Sutton:

Nice, nice. All right, back to back to Ian now we talked a little about how you can use UGC actually on Amazon listings, but then what about off Amazon? now I think the word of year at least one of the words of the year in the Amazon space is Amazon Attribution. it’s been around forever, but now with that brand referral bonus, now all of a sudden people are kind of like, or sellers are incentivized almost to start using Amazon Attribution by sending traffic from off Amazon. So what are some ways that Amazon sellers should be using UGC off of Amazon? Like what platforms and what’s the benefit?

Ian:

Yeah, I mean, we all know like TikTok and Facebook and Instagram are still really important like drivers of traffic. So within JoinBrands, we just added our TikTok integration. Basically, you can pay people to create the content and post it to their own social media pages. And so those people can actually be organically driving traffic. So imagine having 20 or 30 people that you just paid to basically promote your product go into the school college campus and hand out samples like that’s kind of what it is. And that’s a good way to get out organically. And then you can boost those posts through things called Spark Ads and actually like boost that creator’s post on their own page. So you’re not even doing it from your own brand account is one way to get really cheap clicks.

Ian:

I’m seeing clicks in the 10 to 20 cent click range if people who’ve actually watched your product video and how to use it. So I think it’s hugely impactful. And then that brand referable bonus is huge, right? It gives you 10% back on those sales, plus you’re able to track the attribution. Unfortunately, they don’t give us any conversion data, so we can’t like say, okay, once you have a hundred conversions, you can like dial up the ad spend and it’ll just find converters. But right now at least they’re giving us some data, which they never did before from outside traffic.

Bradley Sutton:

Now something you mentioned earlier and it just totally went over my head, but now all of a sudden I’m thinking about it. That’s how my brain works. I’m kind of slow in some regards, but you mentioned using I think video or something in the Q&A section of, of Amazon, that’s something I’m not really familiar with or I haven’t heard somebody else talk about. Can you dive a little bit more into that?

Ian:

That’s more on the UGC side, one of our nine hacks that we, or tips that we share, you know where to use UGC, but basically, you can answer questions on the Amazon listing page with UGC or a video. So it could be either you recording that video or you can go to JoinBrands Give them the answer of the question, and have them record a video of, of like, Hey, this is how you use our garlic press. this is for best practices. And you can answer those questions with these videos. And what’s cool about that is the videos take up a lot of space on the listing page. So when you put an answer to a Q&A question, it’s actually gonna take up way more space than a normal just reply would, which pushes everything else down and gives you more real estate. And people love watching videos.

Bradley Sutton:

Huh. Okay, interesting. Now back to Anthony you’re working at, at Data Dive. Now one of the things I’ve seen you announce somewhere, if I’m not mistaken, correct me if I’m wrong, now you’re integrating like even kind of like like Monday, like task-oriented software and Data Dive. I get that confused or did you guys do that?

Anthony:

Yeah, the kind of the overall thought is like, the way that we look at selling on Amazon is that Amazon is just a really big math equation. And if you try to look at any individual part, it seems like it’s really complex, but like, if you take a step back out, you realize there’s just like all of these levers, right? And for every business, not every business can pull all of the levers. Not every business can pull their lever down as far as everyone else, but there’s a relative lever to like pulling each of a relative lever of pulling these, each of these levers out by, and in order to have a really well run business, you’re gonna have to, like, basically our hypothesis is that like, for if you wanna dominate a niche, all your levers have to be pulled to the exact correct amount at the right time. Nothing is not utilized. And so the thing we were running into a lot of the time is that for organizations it was really difficult to manage a lot of products at once and to make sure that everything, all of these individual products had their levers pulled perfectly. And so the thought is integrating into like more project management software that people are gonna be able to kind of manage an entire product’s lifecycle all in one spot. That’s the plan.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, interesting. Now, about the bread and butter of what you guys do, it’s kind of like what I’ve been talking about for years sometimes people, people say, oh my goodness now Helium 10 has almost a million Chrome extension users and who knows how many people using Cerebro and stuff like that. Like now every Amazon seller is doing this. But what people don’t realize is that yes, regardless of how many users of of Helium 10 and other similar tools are out there, people are not even taking advantage of all the tools. Like I was just doing a workshop on like keyword research and to some top-level sellers and they all had Helium 10, just like most top-level sellers do, but like the number of top-level sellers and these guys know their stuff seven, eight figure sellers who are not even doing like some basic things in Cerebro, kind of like boggled my mind.

Bradley Sutton:

And you guys at Data Dive see this too when, when you first onboard somebody who hasn’t really been using Helium tin or hasn’t used Data Dive before you guys can see like huge gaps that brings instant almost impact because they weren’t doing something and it’s an easy win, like whether it’s tweaking a title or whatever. But my question to you is now that you’ve been doing this for a few months, what are some of the most common things that you’re seeing where you’re like, you cannot believe that they were not doing this, and as soon as they implemented it, they were able to start seeing impact?

Anthony:

I think the biggest thing is if you have an antiquated listing basically not filling gaps in relevancy for the Amazon algorithm. So there are just like keywords that Amazon thinks that you’re relevant for, but you haven’t established that relevancy with Amazon. And so if you’ve got a product that’s been selling for a few years, they’re most likely our keywords that you just need to put into your title for as a few days. And then that keyword rank is gonna go up. So that’s just like low-hanging fruit title optimization stuff is the quickest, highest ROI stuff you’re gonna see.

Bradley Sutton:

Before they make the change, what is it that was basically not optimized? like, yeah, you said that they’re not optimized for the Amazon algorithm, but in specifically like having main keywords and phrase form or having roots in multiple places, like, well, what’s the common things that you’re seeing?

Anthony:

I think a really good example we saw was an example around a card shuffler, and it was like a six-deck card shuffler, but if you think about a card shuffler, it could also shuffle four decks. It could shuffle two decks. And so this seller, it was an old listing, they had it in as a six deck card shuffler, but Amazon thought that they were selling, cuz they’d made a lot of sales for a four-deck card shuffler, Amazon thought it was a four deck card shuffler, but it didn’t establish that relevancy. So when they added in that four keywords into the title, now it unlocked not just that keyword, but all of these other keywords, right? And so, like, Amazon’s algorithm is always trying to establish and determine like, okay, what are the keywords that are actually relevant to this product? Like, what is this thing? Because they don’t have a human go through and categorize what everything is. It’s just based on performance and based on sales. And so if you can identify those things, I mean, it’s just like instant extra cash, extra sales into the business. If you can lift that, establish that relevancy.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, I always teach people, it’s like, Hey, you, you have to make two people happy on Amazon. One is your customer or the other is the Amazon algorithm. If you consider them a person-like, the danger is going all in on one or the other. I could make the prettiest listing in the world with all the best UGC that I’ve spent a lot of money on and just an amazing looking listing that speaks to the customer’s emotions and is optimized for conversion and this and that, but it’s meaningless if I don’t have the right keywords in my listing and I’m not even indexed for the right keywords and I’m not optimized and I can’t get PPP impressions. On the other hand, a person can just focus so much on the Amazon algorithm, like, okay, I have to have my title this many characters and this root word 17 times in order to be relevant and this and that.

Bradley Sutton:

And then they have a completely ugly keyword-stuffed listing that a human being will like never buy. And so it’s like, it’s always like a game of like, hey, you’ve gotta find the right balance there. Now going back to Ian speaking about this more, is there anything more that I haven’t asked about that you can talk about the use of UGC to like really motivate people out there to let them know that, hey, this is something they should really start doing, or maybe some tips on how they can Yeah,

Ian:

I think, well, I mean, just to tie things together, like it really kind of goes back to the optimization thing. It was like there are all these levers that you can pull as a seller, right? And whether it’s UGC or title optimization or bullet point optimization, like data dive does a great job of like summarizing Helium 10 data, right? In a way that’s digestible where it was so complicated before and only people that could figure out how to put three different reports together and analyze the data could do it. And so in Million Dollar Sellers, group, MDS, we would do this a lot. And then I think in Brandon’s group, then everybody would we’re trying to figure out how to, how to take all the tools out there on the market Helium 10 included, and utilize that to a level that other people aren’t, so that you get an edge, right?

Ian:

A lever to pull that nobody else has. And so for me, I’m always looking at pain points that people have, and that’s why I’ve created all the tools, is to solve a, a problem. And this problem was just basically like I had to hire a VA to spend all day inter reaching out to people on Instagram and TikTok and whatnot, and every seller in MDS was doing the same exact thing. So why are we not joining efforts and doing it together and building a platform? And so that’s why we built like JoinBrands, kind of the Upwork of content creators, right? You post a job and creators apply within minutes, it’s like the easiest thing ever. But to do this on your own was so complicated and took a lot of time and you’d send product people and they’d disappear with it and they’d say they have good followings, but they have low engagement.

Ian:

And so all these things together was like, wow, this is an opportunity. And to me, I was looking for product opportunities outside of just Amazon sellers, right? I wanna focus on a market that’s even bigger than that, which is basically e-commerce, and even restaurants, and hotels could even utilize our product to get UGC, even Airbnbs and software providers are using us. So it’s a really cool thing that we built, and I think it just goes down to like, we’re gonna continue to optimize our product to like serve the customer. And I think Helium 10 is doing the same and same with data dive. And the same thing that sellers have to do is you have to constantly improve. And it’s always evolving. And I wish Amazon didn’t make it so hard. Like you said, you change one word in your title and all of a sudden you’re now you’re relevant. Like they have the data, they know what converts, they should have the ai, I mean, I don’t know understand why it’s so challenging and they can’t sort out people who are real buyers versus like fake buyers or people in market, not in the market. How many times do they spend looking for this? How many times do they come back to look at an automotive tool or what have you? So for me, I think it’s just constant optimization changing. Nothing is constant and we just need to keep changing.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, now, Anthony, you remember I used to do this thing the TST 30-second tip, and that was based on my Filipino heritage. You’ve lived in the Philippines, you know how people call each other “TST”, but now I was thinking about it sometimes, or very few people who I’ve been doing that for 402 episodes now, actually stick to the 32nd. So I’m actually changing it to the SST 60-second tip. Now, this is the very first episode after 402 episodes. I’ve changed it from TST to SST. I want you guys to give maybe two each. Maybe we’ll go back and forth here, but Anthony, let’s start with you this could be about keyword research. It could be about 3D imaging, it could be about split testing, whatever you want. What is your first SST of the day?

Anthony:

I’d say that 2023 is all gonna be about operations, and it’s going to. We had all this aggregator money come in for a few years. We got to see what running businesses with huge budgets look like. And then we also saw bootstrap people still doing it the same way. And we’re somewhere in the middle for this. But the people who are gonna win in the end are gonna be heavily metrics-focused, trying little things. And they’re, and they’re not looking for 20% increases in anything They’re looking for little half a percent, 1% gain month after month, but in 10 different categories. And they’re gonna have a team that’s like focused on just improving one metric, and they’re gonna see that go up and see cumulative effects, like really small details, but widespread across a lot of brands. Like that’s what’s gonna win.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. Awesome. All right. Your first one of the day, Ian.

Ian:

All right, I’m gonna give two tips I think that relates to me mostly, but one is for JoinBrands. And that would be basically, I think we have something new that’s a game changer, which is basically being able to work with a ton of TikTokers, having them post about your products for a very low cost. Really simply, you don’t need a VA or you don’t have to do any outreach utilizing JoinBrands. You can activate TikTokers to post about your product and boost those posts organically and drive tons of traffic for cheap clicks. I think that’s completely underutilized. I think it’s the holy grail of TikTok marketing, and we’re gonna keep expanding that. And second is you are who you hang out with and what you associate with and what you learn from. And so your inner circle, Bradley probably knows a lot more than the people outside of that.

Ian:

And so you need to hang out with and chat with people who are like-minded, who are just like you, who are thinking about this day in, day out. They wanna improve their business. They wanna improve their profit margins. They wanna find new levers to pull. And so joining a group like Million Dollar Sellers, which you have to do a Million Dollar Sellers in revenue or more to get in our group, but joining a group like us, you’re gonna be around those people that are helping to level each other up and get 10 x results by helping each other. And it’s not run by any one person. It’s just about your network. And build out your network, you will succeed and hang out with the right people.

Bradley Sutton:

I love it. I love it. Back to you, Anthony, for your second one.

Anthony:

Okay, another 30-second tip is something I’ve been practicing with image optimization of trying to actually get a score for speed of comprehension. And so you can use a split-testing tool, something like PickFu Audiences is, it would be fantastic, is you’ll upload an infographic, something in your image gallery, a secondary image, and you ask, what is the purpose of this image? And then what you think the purpose is, but then you’re just trying to gauge if you’re getting 50 responses. If 40 outta 50 people put in the response that you think is close to that, then you’re good. You’re like 80%. But if 10 people out 50 are saying that you’re getting the same response, then most likely people in a distracted shopping environment, it’s not gonna click that speed of comprehension are not there. And it kind of blows my mind doing this with other sellers, how often you’ll put in like what is in image position, two or three, like really important images that the vast majority of people totally think the purpose of that image is different than what you think.

Bradley Sutton:

Cool. Cool. Another thing this is a really special episode. I’m doing brand new stuff I’ve never done before. Like, like now I’m making it SST, but I forgot about one other thing that I’m starting. And, and that’s at the beginning of this, those watching this on YouTube, you, you’ve probably seen the last two episodes actually, where now I dubbed over my intro and actually it’s, it’s me doing the intro, like somewhere where I’ve been traveling and I’m trying to talk more about like, Hey, entrepreneurs, we need to make sure we have hobbies, things that make us happy and, and things that allow us to kind of reset our brain. Mental health, and physical health, are very important. So for me, my thing is like traveling. And so that’s why I kind of put that now in the podcast where it shows me in a different country at the intro. But I wanna ask each of you, number one like what’s your travel or what’s your like hobby that, that you do to escape from like the desk? And then number two, like, do you have like mental health or physical health habit? maybe it’s a certain way you eat or a certain exercise. Let’s start with Ian.

Ian:

All right. For me, well I’ve got young kids, so my hobbies have been basically their hobbies. But last year I went and river rafted through the Grand Canyon for seven days, got off the grid. And I’m gonna try and keep that going every year and do some sort of like bucket list type of trip with friends, whoever wants to do it if it’s just me if it’s 10 people or me and my wife, what have you. So that’s one thing that I’m trying to do to change the game. And then also at my age, I’m 40 now, I’m about to turn 41. it’s like stretching is like better than meditation, better than chiropractic, better than massages even. It sounds silly, but it’s, it’s amazing what you can how you feel if you actually are stretching. Cause we sit, spend so much time sitting in our chairs. Even I have a rising desk. So for me, I would say that’s a new one and I think it’s pretty cool. I’m gonna do some ice baths and stuff like that. But for the most part, like stretching really has impacted my life recently.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. Anthony, what about you?

Anthony:

Heck yeah, I totally agree on the stretching thing. Didn’t realize how much of a difference it made until you have like, tension build-up, like blows my mind. But I guess a big hobby for me is I love flying drones. I’ve been flying for five years. I’ve gone through like almost 10 of ’em. Lots of crashes, but lots of really cool, good shots. I really love flying drones cuz other people see it and then they’re like, they go get drones and I just think it’s the coolest thing. So I would encourage everyone to get a drone and don’t be afraid about crashing I just do really risky stuff. And then on the, I guess —

Bradley Sutton:

First of all, lemme just say one of the reasons why I bought my drone was because I kept having too much FOMO from seeing Anthony’s Instagram. And so what he said was a hundred percent correct, and now I have a drone thanks to Anthony.

Ian:

It’s on my wishlist too. Yeah.

Anthony:

They’re, they’re amazing machines and it’ll blow anyone’s mind when you actually start using it, like how amazing they are. So I can’t encourage it enough. I guess the healthy thing for mental health to kind of de-stress, I’m really looking forward to ski season. I grew up skiing. I grew up in the East coast and I haven’t lived in the US for a long time, but I got myself an icon pass for this year. So you can basically ski unlimited. And so I’m gonna hopefully try to get around and we’ve got a lot of friends in the e-comm space that live near ski resorts, so I’m trying to hit ’em all up.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, guys if you want to, to get more information on JoinBrands, go to hub.helium10.com. Just type in JoinBrands. But if Ian, they wanna reach out to you maybe directly. Are you down to give out your any kind of contact info or email address or something?

Ian:

You can reach out to me at [email protected] or LinkedIn is a great place to connect with me. just keep that business professional stuff there, milliondollarsellers.com you can search that. And that you can find out how to apply for our membership and join a network of over 7 billion of annual revenue.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. And Anthony, how can they find you guys on the interweb out there?

Anthony:

They can look us up. Seller Systems is the coaching program or Data Dive. And just my email, [email protected].

Bradley Sutton:

Ian Anthony, thank you so much for coming on last second. I know this is kind of a scramble to put this together, but I knew you guys would be better than Batman and Robin as a dynamic duo on here. So we really love this episode and sure our listeners will as well. We’ll be seeing you hopefully at the next meet up our conference.

Anthony:

See everyone.

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