The E-commerce Leader

We are Michael Veazey in London, England.

Jason miles in Seattle, Washington.

More importantly, you are the owner of a thriving online business. And you want to become the best ecommerce leader you can be. We’re here to get you there. Let’s jump in.

Michael, how are you, man?

I’m well, thank you. Yes, sipping a hell of a lot of lemon and honey and ginger tea. But apart from I’m pretty good. Yeah. Yeah, just keep in this coffee bank.

Very well, very well. Good. Well, let’s jump in today. We’ve got a hot topic, I think and that’s the topic of moving from Amazon to Shopify, or from really, you know, Amazon to any other sales channel. But we’re going to sort out how Shopify doesn’t doesn’t help ecommerce sellers, the pros and cons Some of the details so you’re ready to jump into this absolutely hot topic. Definitely. All right, let’s do it. Well, so I guess the first question that comes to my mind is you you know, you work with a lot of amazing Amazon sellers in your 10 k collective and programs work there in London. What have you heard from them in terms of their fears, frustrations, concerns, by way of migrating or adding, you know, a different channel away from

fears, frustrations, concerns? I mean, if you’re talking to an Amazon seller, you know, how long have you got that? I mean, I guess most of them concern Amazon rather than the fear of moving across. It’s funny, I suppose people don’t have so much of fear as a resistance on because Amazon does so much for you. And when we start bitching about Amazon, I guess it’s good to remember that the amount of qualified traffic with a buying intent of people who they have their credit card on file is amazing. And the conversion rates you get on Amazon, I mean, I was looking at somebody that day. And he was saying, you know, it’s 9% conversion rate. And I’m like, well, that’s not great. We could be aiming for 1520 25%. You know, that’s kind of crazily high in the context of anywhere else on online. Right. So yeah, yeah, for those understandable reasons. And, you know, people aren’t in a hurry to get appointments, and they’d like to bitch about it. And I guess every so often, the fear group, some on Amazon, and that’s when they consider maybe making the move. And in fact, to be fair to a lot of the 10 k collective, my mastermind members are very active people who do a hell of a lot of stuff. And a lot of them have, in fact, got their own websites. Some of them look beautifully designed to win them. The functionality is pretty good. But there’s only a couple of people I think, actually have any serious percentage of their sales going through their own non Amazon site. So I guess that tells you a story. Not sure what he does.

What do you think the the kind of the underlying real issue is there is that their time is that their education About the other side, is that their capacity of their team or finances? I mean, what do you think is the actual barrier to the success? is a very good question i organization of the of the work or

Yeah, it could be this a very good question not something I should probably ask people. Um, it sounds like I’m about to pitch them into a Shopify course. But is, it is probably an important discussion point. So how actually because I do think on the one hand, there is a growing awareness and interest amongst more and more members of the masterminds in being able to grow your own audience and specifically contact your own audience. It tends to be a sort of add on so it’s not so much a sales channel thing as a traffic strategy thing. So that or even being able to control things like reviews, so a lot of people building a Facebook chat audience in order to be able to then get more reviews on Amazon, but the sales channels very much Amazon. And it’s not so much a traffic channel as a sort of a channel of course. tax. So the traffic for shopping is still know very much about Amazon. But the channel for getting reviews is stuff like email and more likely chat bot does that make some kind of say I sure like

the direct to consumer communication stuff. They want to be in touch with them personally for email marketing for those kinds of interactions. Sure,

exactly. But on what the resistance is, I guess that here’s the thing that growth sucks cash and also as a capital intensive growth model, business model, and Amazon’s great at selling lots of stuff, which means that people constantly need to apply their capital to that channel and therefore having capital spare and especially to drive traffic, which is my perception of the problem with your own website, isn’t there and then of course, if you’re looking in the shorter and medium term cash flow, then if you put money into Amazon ads, and that tends to convert better than your own sight word, it’s kind of becomes very hard to justify taking the money away from something that is going to produce an immediate cash flow to something that isn’t. This is my conjecture. I’m not sure if this is true or not, but it’s something I really should go and ask and come back to it because it’s an excellent question. Okay.

Yeah, no, I mean, that’s very interesting. What one just responds to what you just mentioned on the ad side. Of course, the mental shift there is on Amazon, if you’re doing a mess work, you’re really spending money to make sales. On Shopify, if you do it, right. I mean, through other advertising platforms, you’re really spending money to acquire a customer. Right? Those are very different outcomes in turn, yeah, ad work. So that’s why it’s a whole, you know, conversation, I suppose. But so my

question for you then from, you know, as a as a as well, Amazon seller, and definitely, you know, both feet in that campaign and to exploring moving out of that. Is Shopify, just a new place to sell things? Or is it just really a different business model? Because what you just said kind of implies it’s perfect. Different,

it’s profoundly different. Yeah, sure. I mean, it’s a very different place. And you know, in the, in the mindsets different, you know, we’ve now on boarded, and I don’t know how many well through my Udemy course I think I’m approaching 30,000 students, but really with coaching clients where we work individually with them either building their Shopify site or helping them sort their, you know, their sites out and getting them launched and that kind of thing. We’ve worked with a lot of people that way. And a lot of the feedback is just the learning curve of it is just it’s a different ecosystem altogether. It’s like you know, it’s like living a bird versus a you know, bunny rabbit versus a fish or something like that. You know, you got three you got the air you got the land and the sea to deal with. They’re just very different climates to operate in. And it takes a while to get get it sorted out I think in your mind and, and to really feel like you’re making traction. I think that’s one of the main things when you get on Amazon, you get this You know, this buzz of, you know, mental energy, you know, synapses firing because of certain milestones. Yeah. And when you’re on Shopify, you get rewarded. And you get those those same bursts of energy for sort of different steps, different parts of the process. And you have to value things differently. You know, you have to value a customer. That’s it, you know, those kinds of things are just very different. So,

I think you’re right. It’s funny how when you do something a lot that you aren’t aware of the mindset you’re building, but as you said, it’s almost like at the synaptic level, and it’s that, yeah, yeah, you’re building dopamine hits for different things. And on Amazon, the fact that you’ve just spent lots of Amazon ad money, and you’ve made a sale, but not necessarily a profit because that 15% that Amazon takes is often a very well judged, because it’s about what you’re going to get out of the process. But actually, it’s very, it’s It’s set up and gamified in a certain way that can I put this it’s addictive, but also it is, well, I guess everything can become addictive, but it’s sort of, I’m gonna put this it’s it I guess a lot of worlds are self referential, but there’s something about Amazon because the traffic is such a big percentage of e commerce and in the USA, allegedly what 60% of e commerce is on Amazon now in terms of the transaction body I suppose. It’s such a vast world, I guess is a bit like Americans. You know, you’re in America, you think what happens in America equals what happens in the world and the only Gimli become aware of this, this place called you know, Europe or China and Japan. And I realized that isn’t the case. I think that’s very true in the Amazon world. And I think also the What is it? What is the mindset? I think it’s really money in sales out that that you get a very immediate hit on now, that ain’t the same as profit, as we all know, and I know that you’re very, very passionate about, about making your clients profit and and rightly so. But I do think that That profit is hard to measure and it requires accuracy and it requires good bookkeeping and sales are immediate so i think that’s that’s the kind of dopamine hit that we get addicted to as Amazon sellers it’s like money into the system now sales another system tomorrow

and and the treadmill there is ever increasing top line sales is the is the primary goal that they’ve incented all the FBA people to focus on and you can just feel it you can sense it as an outside observer. It’s like that’s that that is the metric people are focused on. Yes. And it’s a stoner, that small business owner that runs on your own website. If you’re living off of what you’re doing, then obviously the meat is immediately stripped away on Shopify, and you realize immediately Dang, I just wasted all my money on various supporting elements of my work and therefore have zero profit and you do that for a month or two and then you realize, wait, wait, wait, wait, I gotta pay him. My mortgage I got to take, you know, like, my family out to dinner, I’ve got it like, you know, save for retirement, I need cash in my bank account. And so these are the differences but the technical differences I think we should probably dig into as well.

Absolutely. But I do think that the the mindset differences, I mean, I hadn’t really thought about it that much. And I’ve always thought it was just a technical thing. But I think you’re right. I think that one of the surprising things about some really bright motivated people Amazon sellers is how little value they place on the profitability of their business as such, and as you know, profit meaning including their salary as a cost, and then the profit the business and also how many people get to about three years in and are really taking a salary. Both of which, for very intelligent business like people in many cases,

show the the sheer

weight that people put on growth, almost like it’s a religion dominates. It’s almost like a religion. Is this culture in America but it’s just become exaggerated in the Amazon world so that I do think you’re right. I hadn’t really, increasingly just strike me as it is a mindset shift.

Well, here’s the question, who in that three year period did take a salary? And I can guarantee you one thing Jeff Bezos did, and the people at Amazon did. I mean, they built their side of the equation to fund their dreams, they had to create real huge Of course, he’s the richest guy in the world now.

Yeah, wealth but not profit, though. Interestingly, because I think there is an analogy between the mindset of Amazon as a corporate entity and the mindset they encourage and succeeding amongst their third party sellers, which is growth, growth, growth, growth, market share, and to a degree, if there is a growing market that is valuable, you should be getting obsessive market share. And that’s the star principle that Richard Costas used fantastic business thing, Kay’s made himself rich and then wrote a book about it, which is kind of the right way around in my business. In a bit like Nicolas Nassim Taleb but that’s how you say his name, mascot Yes.

But here’s the thing if you want to say that the Amazon as a company isn’t taking profit out of their system, therefore this individual FBA seller shouldn’t either the difference is of course the legal structure. Most Amazon FBA sellers are not c corporations that have taken massive venture capital that become publicly traded. The financial structure is completely different. And the game plan therefore is completely different. Very true. Let’s let’s talk about Shopify details here. And some of the why, and how of getting from Amazon to Shopify, because I think that’s an important takeaway for this conversation. Absolutely. Yes. Yeah, yeah. So let’s do that. You know, I’ve got tons of stories and examples any top of my question, Where do you want to kind of take that part of the conversation? Yeah,

well, okay. You were talking I guess the flip side of the the resistance of why are people not doing it? How do we What is the business case? For someone who’s selling on Amazon? Let’s say somebody’s doing a million dollars a year run rate, which I know several people in the masterminds are doing. So it’s about 80,000 $100,000 a month. And they believe if they plan correctly, they can grow about 40% in terms of top line sales at some level of profit in the next 18 months, if they stay on Amazon, what is the business case for taking that money and focus away from Amazon and putting it into some fi?

Yeah, no, I mean, I think it’s, it’s a great question. So a few things immediately come to my mind. First is your sales channel and many people are talking you know, the buzz phrases, omni channel, you know, selling approach for e commerce work, the the unlocking of sales channels, makes you increasingly bulletproof from any catastrophic event on one sales channel, and that so business risk mitigation is one aspect. And so and that’s an important thing to think about, especially in what I’ve seen with my coaching clients is Nobody thinks about that when you’re making $1,000 a month. And nobody thinks about that, when you’re making $5,000 a month, people might start to think about when they’re making 20 to $30,000 a month, and I’m talking net profit out of their system. And when people are starting to make real money through their sales channel, they start to realize all of their eggs are in one basket, and it’s not so much theoretical. It is literally they could be, you know, one, you know, catastrophic event away from having a massive cash flow problem. And so it becomes real, the higher up you know, it’s kind of like the higher you climb in the tree, the more you risk falling. And I think that’s, that’s part of it. The the other part of it is just unlocking additional elements of your business model. So unlocking direct to consumer sales, more unlocking promotions, discounts, there are many things you can’t do on Amazon. That as you grow your business you want to do email collection is the most obvious giveaways and prizes is another incentive reviews that are not a to that are not a TLS that are a TLS violation are certainly doable on your own site and they’re not unethical in any way. So these types of changes to your business model become important as well. And, and it is totally doable. We work with clients, one client comes in my mind, he has a million dollar business between Amazon and eBay. We started working with him about seven months ago. And his near term goal was to have a Shopify site, that would be a meaningful percentage of his sales. And so we set our goal the first goal was to get to 10% of sales. We do that like in the first two months after the site was launched. And then the second goal was to get to 20%. Last month, we just looked at it with him yesterday. Last month it was over 25% is around 30% of total sales. came through Shopify. And we tracked that with him. And that’s just he’s just inching his way up the food chain towards a greater and greater percentage of direct to consumer sales on his own Shopify site.

And may I ask what the sort of roughly levels of sales are? I mean, 25% of what roughly?

Yeah, it used to be like 700 400, eBay, Amazon, eBay, so is Amazon, eBay, Amazon primary, eBay secondary, and then and now Shopify, tertiary. And and so those, those efforts are or they do pay off.

So we’re getting up to sort of 250 k 200 k a year in on his own site, something like that.

Yeah. And we’ve got other very meaningful percentage for sure. Yeah, we’ve got other clients who have you know, different situation different client comes to my mind, they’ve skyrocketed Amazon. They’re just doing amazing. They’ll probably do $5 million This year on Amazon and and they’re they’re really focused on getting their Shopify direct to say consumer sales because they want to mostly, they’re not so much afraid of shut down, what they really want to do is unlock wholesale distribution to retailers. And they want to run that business through Shopify. And so that, you know, these are the use cases that you start to realize are valuable, you know,

yeah, wholesale distribution isn’t a single another one. But yeah, that’s that’s very heartening tale because I think to get to 25% of sales, if you’re doing you know, around the balls, just over a million dollars a year

1.2 something whatever. Yeah,

that’s, that’s pretty impressive. And what strikes me about that is the creativity and the How can I put it that the feeling that you own your results of your efforts, which feels quite different? And I think quite a lot of people look on that MVC and thinking how can I have an element of that Because you’re building a future income stream for yourself, as opposed to, you’re building a future income stream, which you get to take the money off, but you don’t get any of the other assets, the clients, you don’t get the email, follow up sequences, you can tweak and make sure that they work properly. And you know, which have a value in themselves. Right. So, yeah. All right, well, so we can begin to see why people should do this. Tell me about the the challenges. I mean, for me, the number one challenge, the challenges will come in simply two numbers, the conversion rate and traffic costs. So how do people begin to get their heads around that?

Sure. Yeah, I mean, I think there are there there are a few challenges that are top of mind for people and kind of depends on who you are and your background. The way I kind of look at it, there are you know, four or five key aspects of a Shopify effort. The first one is, you know, site design, literally building the site. And I’ll just say that what I’ve seen work best Entrepreneurs are small business owners that are willing to stick their hands in the wet cement and try to make something and try to sort out how it works early and then bring a team or success for people or a competent people around them. To help them improve it, that model in my mind works really well. The opposite of that if you reverse it, and you just go looking for somebody to build you a Shopify site, and you have no clue about how to actually push any buttons or you know, make any changes, you end up in, almost held hostage by your Shopify team. And that’s just not a fun place to be. So you know, a lot of the work we do with Shopify store owners with our coaching is like, Hey, here’s how do i do you know, those ask question, how do I do this? And I’ll literally screen share, and I’m like, this is how you do it. You don’t have to ask your VA you don’t have to wait three days for somebody else to do it. It’s super some of the changes are so simple. So that’s one piece is just having the site work. And then you know, you can get ecommerce operators that over do that, and they’ll waste their time fiddling around with their site. And candidly, one of the elements that ties into is you’ve got to have a visual, I guess you would say, level of visual quality that you bring to the party as the owner, that you either create yourself through site photography, lifestyle style, editorial photography, we’ll call it lifestyle photography, and product photography and sort of the general graphics and layout, or you’ve got to have competent people on your team that help you get there. We it’s it’s painful to work with a Shopify store owner that has no taste, visually and literally just is blind to the ugliness of what they’re building. Yeah, horrible to say but but that’s a reality. You have to be responsible for The visual effect that you create through your store,

I have to say from that point of view, I mean, it’s I mean, it’s very interesting to hear that. But I mean, it does make sense, of course. But I think that as Amazon gets a little bit more sophisticated in the store fronts are things that they’re beginning to emphasize. There’s maybe less of division between the skill sets there then then you may have had a while ago, because I think bringing up the pictures up on Amazon is also makes me cringe when I look is just the same reaction you have I look at some people’s listings, I’m like, Okay, wow, we can improve this so easily. Because Don’t do this. Don’t do this and think about this. And have you thought this through and say, You know, I think some of the the visual language, you have a lot more freedom on a Shopify site, I guess. So therefore, you have more freedom to be tasteless as well.

You know, it’s, it’s, it’s, that’s right, you have to define what you know, the professional marketers would say that you have to have a brand style guide. And you have to create that as the chief marketer for your Shopify site. So you create a brand style guide and it means the fonts you use the color palette, You know, you don’t want 19 different shades of blue. Yeah, that you randomly choose, you know, you want to use a style guide. The other thing that I think people glitch out over a little bit is, is the additional content for the site, you know, you want to have high quality content on your about page, your, your, you know, other pages on your site, telling your story, a little bit of, you know, making your site look like a real, you know, kind of web web presence. And some people struggle with that, but blogging and that those kinds of things kind of help having at least a free resource to, you know, as an ethical bribe for people to opt in, you know, why would people join your newsletter list kind of working through those details. And then to your point, you know, your other comment that you started this, this line of thinking with is the lead generation for traffic, you know, and then conversion, traffic and conversion of course, go together. high quality traffic creates high conversion. And so they’re actually closely tied low quality traffic produces low conversion rate. My conversion rate for our Pixi fair site for many years was over 30%. Because I ran a freemium model. And one and the conversion metric was a free download. So it was sort of a rigged conversion rate. Now, we went away from the freemium model, two years ago, two and a half years ago. And now our conversion rate is in the seven to 8% range, which is insanely high still. And, but, but that’s my site, but many of our clients will have a conversion rate on Shopify in the two to 4% range. They say industry average is 2%. And it falls apart. When you look at the details between what was added to the cart, what was actually, you know, effectively purchased, and there’s levels of you know, breakdown at that step. But the traffic generation creates Conversion values, you know, that you want. So the real question is, where are your customers? ideal customers? How do you find them?

Yeah, that’s that is a real question. I just want to briefly touch on the photography side, because I guess in a sense, so the that’s one of the sort of comfort zones for for an Amazon product seller, because you’ve got to have number one, you’ve got to have some decent product photos these days, you really should have some lifestyle shots. And if you’re using enhanced brand content, or as it’s now called a plus content, you have quite a bit of scope for some more general lifestyle shots. So what do we need to let’s put it that’s just keep it simple. What do we need to add to that collection of photography for a Shopify store owner that we wouldn’t already have as an Amazon seller?

Yeah, the difference is on a Shopify site, you have to actively manage your homepage and have visual effect of you know, graphics and photos for the ever changing seasons or, you know, frequency of modification of your homepage. You know, you don’t Think about that on Amazon, you just want to have your product listing photos sorted. But on your own Shopify site, if people come to the same site twice, if they see the same exact homepage, they’re going to assume it’s a very static dead place. If they see an ever changing homepage, they’re gonna think, Oh, these guys are really hustling. There’s a lot of stuff going on here. So if nothing else, just knowing how to get an ongoing stream of lifestyle photography done is important. And there’s methods for doing that. And obviously it comes down to knowing how to take the shots yourself and do the work in Canva or Photoshop Elements. Or having a photographer in your system that you work with that tees things up for you constantly and it could be by season it could be by you know, a lot of the work we do on Pixi fair is literally like we’ll have thematic changes every week. So we change our homepage every week with a theme that drives sales. So literally, this week is hopping, hop hopping into spring. And hoppitty hoppitty pattern is a bunny rabbit pattern. And the sale is bunny Bogo. And this is, you know, this is the stuff we featured, literally Today on our site. And so eBay, like in the system, the system to do that is what’s important. It’s just not a one time setup. Like, you know, sort of Amazon can be in a way, you know.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. Yeah. Thank you. No, that’s right. No, that’s great. Now that that’s very good. It’s nice and clear about the difference, say, in a way, it’s more of a curation question, isn’t it I suppose like if you if you’re running a museum, which is kind of not as live as a website, but the artworks you’re exhibiting were made several hundred years ago. So it’s not about production. It’s about choices, juxtapositions, themes, making the old new again, it strikes me there, there’s a curation as Which is in service of classical musicians, this is where you spend a lot of your life doing and Okay, you’ve, you’ve got a grab bag of, you know, 500 schools on your shelf and you go, Okay, so what are we going to do over the next two years? And what’s my theme going to be? And is it really made? Yeah, yeah. Make it fresh. Yeah. Interesting. So tell me about the content side of thing, then talking of the broader sort of stuff that you have on site that you definitely don’t have this option, let alone problem on Amazon. I mean, there’s blogging there just to make you look like a quotes legit business, or what’s the purpose of that? Or is that part of your traffic strategy on a Shopify site?

Absolutely part of your traffic strategy and and we should spend a whole episode or many on traffic approaches, but I would just say blogs Central, it’s for a couple reasons. And I’ll just say one seed, one thought that any amazon seller should think about and that is, what is the How to related content associated with your product, how to set it up, how to use it, how to care for it, how to replace it when it’s broken, how to do anything. In association with the product that you’re selling is fantastic blog content and really as a layered approach to it, it’s fantastic video content that you would put on YouTube, and then embed into a blog post. And there you go, you’ve got the makings of a great information marketing in association with your product. And honestly, that works in any category. I don’t care if it’s toothbrushes, that you’re selling or t shirts or anything, ask the question, what would the consumer potentially need to know? To use this effectively? And and don’t assume anything? Just just lay it out?

Assume nothing. Yeah.

As soon as you mentally assume, oh, they Everyone knows that. Yeah. You vacate your opportunity to add good content and you eliminate your opportunity to get long term organic search traffic because of the value of that content on your site. You

know, yeah. And what strikes me about a lot of especially e commerce products But focus content related marketing is that a lot of the time, it’s not saying anything revolutionary, that isn’t obvious, but it’s just putting one or two little extra bits of security because you’re an expert in T shirts. you’ve dealt with them 10,000 times, I suppose a few times in your life or something. Yeah. You know the exact angle, you should use a toothbrush because you’re a dentist, I guess a little bit more authoritative. It makes me feel secure that what you’re saying is correct. That I’m doing the right thing. So a lot of the time it’s it’s about little nuances, isn’t it? So I think it is in a given example.

Yeah, please do. Yes. Okay. It’s early spring here. Frost hasn’t happened yet. I’m a happy gardener. I have a site called Happy Gardening life. I’m not a gardening expert, though. Honestly, I’m a foolish, untrained, uneducated gardener. I just want to be like my grandpa, I think who was a farmer? And so I’m, there’s a thing with potatoes called shitting your potatoes, which is putting them out in the sun so they start to sprout before you put them in the ground. And I’m doing that in the garage. Well, they’re all starting to sprout, but I can’t tell is what’s coming out a route or the top of the plant? So do I have it turned upside down or right side up right now? And is my and that sounds like such an idiotic introductory question. But I looked everywhere online on all the YouTube channels on all the sites. No one says that basic thing when stuff starts to sprout out of it potato pointing it towards the sun or pointed towards the dirt. I it’s, you know, these are basic questions

are not to be overlooked by ecommerce sellers, or absolutely

now if you’re selling little shitting trays if such a thing exists, I’m because my mum knows about this stuff. I mean, I’m like the opposite of you and that my mum’s a keen gardener and and like I it hasn’t passed on, you know, we love languages. We’re communicators. But But yeah, that’s one thing that bypassed me, but that is exactly the sort of thing that Yeah, I suppose stuff that you would ask your mom or your dad Your grandfather in your case may be that you know and get a very straightforward answer. Only without the shame of him going, you idiot. Why do you know that? I guess yeah, that that sounds like an excellent sort of thing content and bearing in mind that the market of people who have no idea which way a potato goes, which would definitely include me versus the specialist market, people would roll their eyes and go off, for goodness sake, it’s obvious, is going to be 10 times bigger, obviously. So that if you’re looking to get to reasonably mass market or a fair percentage of your market, then saying that quote, blindingly obvious is is probably excellent. Guide. So thank you for that encouragement. And we definitely do need to talk about I mean, yeah, content and when traffic is huge. I know we’ve got like, something like that we’ve already got, folks, if you’re listening and thinking, where are we going with all this stuff? We’ve got about 30 potential episodes in outline already. I mean, there is an insane amount of stuff. There’s one reason why I was delighted to work with Jason because his mind he knows an insane amount and the collision of worlds like Shopify and Amazon is always going to be thought provoking, I always find that it’s. So we will get into that. But let’s just talk briefly about you talk about conversion rates and the high quality traffic produces high conversion rate. That makes sense. Okay, so what’s in, you know, in essence, I know we’ve got the nine mountains of traffic to go through. So we’re gonna have many more episodes. But what’s the sort of essential elements to traffic that is high quality, and it’s going to convert? What are the raw basics of this?

Well, I mean, I think what a lot of people start to have to sort out in their mind is what is buying traffic versus informational educational traffic, you know, that example I just gave of which, which way up as a potato. If I was searching for that information, I’ve already got the potato. I’ve already got the trays, I’m not a buyer. But if you treated me well, with that content, I would be aware of you. And I would look to see what you’ve got. And so you’ve got to sort out in your mind who’s hungry for actual, you know, product and how do you find them and who’s just Looking for general information and there’s a no bleed over, as I just mentioned, but that’s one of the top level questions. And you know, then it goes from there. You know, you’ve got to think through where your tribes exist. If there are key influencers or leaders online, you know, a lot of Reddit groups are huge. Reddit marketing is incredible. And YouTube is a huge, huge opportunity. YouTube is eating the internet, it seems these days. And then there are other strategies as well, to find good solid sources of buying traffic. We’ve gotten some coaching clients who have skyrocketed their sales and this is true for both on Amazon and off Amazon. And they didn’t know why. And that was just sort of probe into it looked into it. And what they found was a lot of the bloggers that were really influential that did tons of traffic, had them and listicles and their products and listicles. So it was like the top 10 you know, whatever product insert product Name online and or, you know, the amazing seven, you know, products that will help you do whatever. And those big, incredible blog articles drove tons of traffic. So these are the things you start to learn and think about. And a lot of times, you know, even on Amazon, you might think your sales are because of Amazon. You don’t know. You really don’t you don’t know. It could be from the New York Times listing you in one of their listicles. But it goes to Amazon, and you never even knew it. You didn’t even know. Yeah, these are the things you learn and think about.

Yeah, and what’s interesting about this, and this is where the worlds are less separate, perhaps is that this whole sort of Shopify versus Amazon debate and yes, there is a different business model when it comes to traffic outside of the Amazon ecosphere, but not necessarily trying to convert it on Shopify and build your own lists and so forth. There is a rich seem to be very, very big, rich seem which to me feels very undertaxed. Because it’s hard work of people finding ways to drive traffic from off Amazon onto Amazon and substantially in some cases just hugely increase their sales. And we’ve had several examples of that in the 10 k collective because they, as I say, that bright hard working guys, one person got a product onto the Jonathan Ross show, which is primetime TV in the UK. So 4 million viewers or something, and it’s sold out overnight, which is good because I think it was Halloween products. I’m being as specific as I dare and that was basically obviously you either sell it or you’re or you’re stuck with it for 12 months. And some other people are there’s one other person is now specializing in. reading off Amazon traffic. Ashley Pierce has set up an agency to do this very thing because he’s part of the opportunity. But he’s very big on Google. SEO traffic as a long term slow burn but very good Valley traffic source which really ties right back in with you know, having a blog. If you’re a Shopify store, I know the only difference being where people actually buy because the conversion rates on Amazon is still incredibly high, they still do FBA. So they’ll deal with fulfillment, they still have people’s credit cards on on file. So all those virtues still exist. But you’re driving the traffic there. So that’s a really interesting hybrid to me.

Yeah, you mentioned that you nine mountains of traffic and just to just to tease that out a little bit. So you know, one of the exercises, Kyle and I did my business partner, when we started working with coaching clients and, and I had written Pinterest power in 2011 with McGraw Hill came out. And then a couple books subsequent to that. I went through and did an exercise where I tried to sort out what were all the traffic sources on the internet. And I just I don’t know why it was just a weird question my mind like what are the types of traffic sources and as it happens, there are nine types and we kind of sorted them out and have that sort of visually presented and we caught nine mountains of traffic and I that’s definitely a topic we should dig into at some point. And I just wanted to mention what it was because you had mentioned it and And I think it’s a it’s a huge value opportunity for people to just think through, you know, like what what, what are the available sources? Before you even worry about how do you get any traffic? You got to think? How do I, how do I know who drives traffic? You know, it’s like, what are the systems that play?

Yeah, absolutely. like playing them, you know?

Yeah. And also I think what’s important again, talk about mindset shift is not on Amazon. It’s, it’s a bit like a prizefighter. You got to get in there, get very, very fit, and learn to punch really hard. Your arms. Yeah, you got it, you got to be very, very aggressive, but within a very narrow skill set and a very narrow place suddenly, if you’re most blinking into the sunlight, and consider that you might just get some traffic that Amazon has maybe 60% of ecommerce, but it doesn’t have 100%. There’s another 40% which is big and still growing as well. Then suddenly, the idea that you have options and that you have multiple options is, I think very reassuring and important

isn’t. It can be disorienting. Yes using because you can get over it can be immediate overwhelmed. Yeah. What do I do? There’s so many things there’s so many choices and options.

All right, well so which brings me to an excellent question which which maybe to wrap this episode up because these are huge areas it’s like so ripping open you know the box of your, your Christmas present and you discover there are like 10,000 presents inside but as a lovely way of putting it but maybe they’re not all beautiful presents. But what is the simplest starting point for you then have the if you’re going to come from Amazon and start like you’ve dealt with with a couple of your clients, you’ve helped them in this process recently. What are the starting points? You’re talking about the site, the content, the design, everything else? Where do you even start? Do you start with the site itself? Do you would you start with traffic strategies? What where do you actually start?

It’s a great question I love this is perfect. is a very clear place to start and it confuses many people. You start with your brand. You have to have your brand on on lockdown legally And in other ways, I mean, you have to know what you’re doing on the on the brand elements to create a successful Shopify site. You cannot create a five and dime store. Did you have those in England? I don’t

even know. But you know, like a general merchandise store. It can’t.

Okay. Yeah, like a local coffee shop a

dime store. Yeah, it will not work. It has to be a specific brand designed for a specific niche audience. And you’ve got to get the element sorted out the legal name, the URL, the vanity URLs. We liked the tool name checker. Maybe we put that in the show notes. But name checker is kind of cool. It shows you if the name is available across all social platforms and other locations. And you’ve got to start there. And if you’ve created a private label product that was sort of with no disrespect, sort of Finley thought through for Amazon purposes where you really didn’t look to see if it was legally available or you know, available on social handles, stuff like that. You’ve got to go back and do that primary work. And that’s really the important starting point. And we’ve had clients who have been really successful on on the, you know, Amazon, eBay marketplaces and ditch didn’t have the branding work sorted out at all. And so we’ve started from scratch with them. And and I love branding as a topic. It’s a blast. And so that, you know, that’s the foundational piece, I think. Yeah.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai