Amazon Update: September 2014

Posted on October 1, 2014 by

Earnings
Gross Sales: $19,232.94
Units Sold: 1690
Amazon Profit: $8,697.55
Affiliate Earnings: $548.33

Total (Banked) USD$9,245.88

Amazon just seems to keep getting bigger and better. The growth is happening regardless of me adding any new products. I actually ran out of stock of a couple of my top selling products and still increased earnings. This business amazes me. No matter how badly you screw it up you can still make some great bank!

Consolidated Listings

This month I did something which I’d been wanting to do for a long time. I consolidated several of my listings into one parent listing with multiple child listings. When I first started out I set up a lot of my products, which were the same product but different colors etc, into separate listings with their own UPC, ASIN etc. They each received their own reviews and sold decently. My rationale here was to add them to various different categories to try to appear in more search results. However, after consolidation I now realize that the combined power of higher review scores (when you consolidate all the reviews are added together), gets much better results. My two biggest sellers have now over +100 review each. This has dramatically increased the sales rank of the items and sales have been much better!

New Products

This month I have added 9 variations to two of my current lines and also added one completely new product. I’ve got a few more in the research process and hopefully will have them also on the way to FBA by November.

Back To Work

I’m continuing to send out review requests to the professional reviewers in the Amazon Top Reviewers List. Around 100 emails a month seems to be a manageable number and gives goods results. I now have a database of the top 2000 reviewers names and email addresses. My seller reviews and natural product reviews are still coming in nicely.

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Amazon Update: August 2014

Posted on September 2, 2014 by

Amazon
Gross Sales: $18,028.72
Profit: $7,974.12
Refunds    ($395.69)
Reimbursements    287.59
TOTAL    $7,866.02
Affiliate Earnings
Clickbank etc…: $720.13

Banked: USD $8,586.15

Protaras Bay

Still on holiday on the beach in Cyprus while Amazon makes money for me.

Well, even though I was sitting on a beach for all of August my Amazon earnings still increased. I hardly did any work at all. I basically only checked in on things to check stock levels and seller messages. I think the continued increase is mainly due to my products getting more reviews and my seller rating which is still at 100%. With this type of increase it’s time to get back to work and really work this system to its full potential!

Reviews

My top product now has 81 reviews. From a total of 23 SKU’s (individual listings) I have 438 reviews total. I can definitely work on increasing this and now that I’m back at work this will become part of my daily tasks. I will start going through the Amazon reviewers list from 1000 down now. I have already catalogued the top 1000 list already.

Seller Feedback

100% Positive!

I reached a milestone this month; 200 seller reviews! I’m up to 219 now and ALL positive so far. I do get a few negative ones, but they’re mainly product criticisms or to do with shipping. If you create a new case with Amazon they remove these pretty quickly.

Duplicate Products

This month I had someone try and sell their own version of my product on MY listing. Now, I’ve had a few of these before and I have a sternly worded template which I fire out which usually does the job and gets them to take their products down. However, this time they didn’t. What is worse is that they were getting the buy box because of their price. I sent a final warning follow up email, but they didn’t acknowledge it. I created a case with Amazon support but they didn’t act and told me I had to follow this procedure:

1. File a violation on this link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/reports/contact-us

2. You have actually buy their product and take photos of it to prove it is not the same.

3. Include all of the usual ASIN and info. Give a brief descrition of why the product is different etc…

I did all this stuff (all the while losing sales as their crap product was selling on my listing) and pretty much straight away their products were gone. Now, I’m not sure what happened to them in terms of reprimands, but I do think Amazon would take this sort of counterfeit selling seriously. I’m sure it would also be noted and recorded against their seller account.

I checked this morning and I have another 2 sellers trying to sell on another lsiting of mine. I’ve sent them the second email, without reply, and now have now progressed to purchasing the product. I’m going to file the same report for these guys too. Too bad as they both seem new. Howevr, I did give them fair warning.

New Products

I have already started getting my agent looking for sources for my new product lines. I have 3-4 new products I’m trying to find a manufacturer for. Shouldn’t be too difficult. Just have to make a always get samples and do my due diligence.

Goals

While on holiday I saw a product on Clickbank where the guys were working the Amazon business and one of them was doing over $500,000.00 in PROFIT per month. This really made me think what is possible with this and expanded my thinking about the potential here. Now half a million a month is incredible, but with the right systems to scale this business up, I can see no reason why I shoudn’t be able to do something similar.

Time to think big!

 

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Amazon Update & Summer Break!

Posted on August 2, 2014 by
Pamukale Hot Springs

Pamukale Hot Springs

Amazon
Gross Sales: $14,837.87
Profit:    $6546.87
Refunds: -$248.78
Reimbursements: $305.19
TOTAL    $6,603.28
Affiliate Earnings
Clickbank etc…: $631.59

Banked: USD$7,234.87

Ancient City of Ephesus

Ancient City of Ephesus

I’m on holiday this month and next, however I still somehow managed to increase my earnings by a grand on last month. Maybe I should take more holidays! Seriously though, this Amazon stuff is AMAZING! I mean, I used to think affiliate marketing was a good gig (before Google Penguin), but selling on Amazon is waaaaay better. The hours required to run this business are even less than affiliate marketing, and I’m even talking if you have a VA team too. It’s literally only 30 mins or less a day to maintain this business. It’s takes more time if you’re adding new products, but once you get them going, it’s nothing.

Anyway, my seller feedbacks are still increasing steadily and still on 100% positive. My products feedbacks are increasing too. I think this may be why sales are increasing. I’m going to keep mining the Amazon reviewers list for more reviews since it seems to be paying off.

I’m looking forward to getting some new products going. However, I’ve still got another month holiday in Cyprus (first world problems eh…).

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Amazon Update: June 2014

Posted on July 1, 2014 by

Earnings

Amazon
Units Sold: 1063
Gross Sales: $12,612.13
Refunds: -$303.97
Reimbursements: $411.37
Profit (Money Banked): $5730.82
Clickbank
Affiliate Commissions: $532.67

Total (Banked): $6,263.30

Amazon Seller Feedback

Amazon Seller Feedback

Seller Feedback

My seller feedback is still increasing steadily. The number of positive reviews is very encouraging for me. It makes me fell like people really like my products and I am actually conduting my business in a positive manner.

Product Feedback

Amazon Product Reviews

Amazon Product Reviews

I haven’t talked too much about this before. But as I sell more on Amazon, I am beginning to learn how important getting positive reviews is for more sales. From all my products I have a total of 217 product reviews. Lately I have been giving away products for free to Amazon professional reviewers (you can see the list here). This strategy has been working very well and is giving good results. I can see my sales rank increase and also more sales coming in.

Last month I hired someone from Odesk; paid them $20 and they copied into a spreadsheet ALL the top 1000 Amazon professional reviewers names and email addresses. The best twenty bucks I’ve ever spent!

I use the mail merge feature in word to send bulk individual emails to them whenever I want some more reviews. Works like a charm.

SEO

No change here.

Amazon Brand Registry

This past month I recieved an email from Amazon asking me to join the Amazon Brand Registry. I did it, it was pretty easy. However, I haven’t seen any noticebale benefits or changes to anything in my seller account?

Frustration Free Packaging

I also had an email asking me to join the Frustration Free Packaging program (FFP). They said I had a couple of products which could be eligible. I made some enquiries and have since realised that this is not that easy to implement and they couldn’t tell me what the explicit benefits would be, so I didn’t bother joining.

New Products

It’s been awhile since I added any new products to my inventory. At this stage I have a pile of samples which I can add, but since I’m just about to go on summer holiday for 2 months, I’m going to leave it until I return. I’d really like to increase the sales from my existing product first anyway before expanding.

 

 

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Amazon Update: May 2014

Posted on June 2, 2014 by

Earnings

Amazon
Units Sold: 911
Gross Sales: $11,043.22
Profit (Money Banked): $4,499.12
Clickbank
Affiliate Commissions: $1,122.61

Total (Banked): $5,621.73

Not as big a increase as I’d like, but at least still moving in the right direction.

Feedback

amazon-seller-feedback

I passed 100 seller feedbacks this month. Feedbackfive is really giving me good results here.

As for products feedback, the reviews are coming in slowly and getting some nice traction. I’ve had a couple bad reviews this month but managed to negotiate with the customers and got them taken off.

SEO

No ranking or movement here.

Amazon UK

I have signed up for amazon.co.uk, an EU account. The account is still not active yet as I’m waiting for address verification. This is proving to be difficult as they require a utility bill with the address. I’m working on getting this done.

The goal here is to duplicate my products/listings from my USA account over to the EU. Since I already have a supplier getting started should be reasonably easy once my account gets approved.

What Next?

It’s time to create some new listings now and add some more products. I’m very comfortable with my current range but would like to earn more.

I went to the mall last week and came back with a list of about 20 possible products. I’ve gone through amazon and narrowed the list down. I have my sourcing agent in China looking for sources now and getting quotes for me.

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Amazon Update: April 2014

Posted on May 4, 2014 by

Earnings Report

Amazon Earnings Jan - April 2014

Amazon Earnings Jan – April 2014

Units Sold: 889
Groos Product Sales: $10007.57
Profit (Money Banked): $4225.68
Clickbank Earnings: $690.95
TOTAL: $4916.63

I’ve started to include my affliate income on these posts now. I usually get 4 figures from this source, but April was a slow month for affiliate earnings. As for Amazon however, it’s been a good 4th month for me here, nearly doubled last month’s Amazon profits and hit +10k in gross sales.

My average profit per item sold on Amazon jumped by $1.31 which helped massively increase the amount of profit I reaped compared to the number of extra sales.

The increase in profitability is mainly due to two factors:
1. My buying agent finding me cheaper sources.
2. Slightly increasing my prices across the board on a few selected items.

SEO Results

The SEO I did for my listings hasn’t increased my Google rankings for any of my keywords. The URLs have some awesome links and they theoretically should be ranking. But, they’re not.

I’m not investing any more money into this side of things until it shows some rankings. I’m looking forward to the next Google Page Rank Update. We’ll see….

Amazon Advertising

amazon advertising results

Amazing ROI Forom Amazon Advertising!

The results from doing Amazon advertising are incredible. Spending $13 to make $627.54. I’ll do that deal all day long! If you’re not doing advertising on Amazon, you need to get in there NOW.

Reviews

I have sent a lot of my products to professional reviewers in the Top 100 reviewers list. The reviews are trickling in and seem to be having a positive effect.

I hired someone on Odesk to troll the list and input all the names and email addresses for the Top 1000 reviewers into a spreadsheet for me. $25 well spent there. The list is awesome. I’m keeping track on there who and what I send out and what reviews come in.

My seller rating is continuing to grow strong. I have had a few negative product reviews this month, but they posted them as seller reviews, so once I submitted a ticket to Amazon they all were removed, yay!

The reviews I get from using Feedbackfive are great. I’ll keep my subscription with them for sure too.

Where To From Here?

It’s hard to make goals since things are happening so fast. However one thing I definitely have in the pipeline is teaching others where I live to do what I do. Since I’ve started this heaps of people have been asking me about it. I do tell them about PAC and have affiliate links on my website. However, I’m possibly thinking of running some workshops.

As for my own sales, who knows. As long as things keep increasing I’ll be happy.

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Amazon Update: March 2014

Posted on April 1, 2014 by

March Earnings

Amazon March Earnings

Amazon March Earnings

Sales: 657
Profit: $2261.74 (Gross Sales $6827.35)

Interesting thing this month is that my gross sales actually dropped but I still made more profit. This is due to the cheaper sourcing costs because of my new buying agent in China.

I’m slowly coming to terms with how slow this business is. Shipping, production and product listing growth all take a lot more time than I realised.

Seller Feedback

Amazon Seller Feedback Stats

Amazon Seller Feedback Stats

Since I started using Feedback Five I am getting a lot of positive seller feedback. I think the way the automated emails go out, it seems to favor seller feedbacks as opposed to product feedback. At the moment I’m happy with this, but may change the email structure soon to generate more product feedbacks.

Amazon Advertising PPC

Amazon Advertising PPC Results

Amazon Advertising PPC Results

I’ve started doing Amazon PPC for some of my more established and well stocked products. The results so far are excellent. As you can see from above, the ROI is amazing. I will definitely be expanding more into this area. The key for me is finding high traffic buyer keywords which convert for my particular products.

SEO For Amazon Products

I started this last month, but realised early this month that I made very big mistake. I used the wrong URL. I didn’t realise that there were multiple URLs for every listing and the one Amazon directs you to through your seller account is not usually the one Google will index and give the highest rankings.

For example, seller central shows me:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/asinnumber

But if you Google your product title to see which URL Google is ranking, and the one you should be doing SEO for you find something like this:

http://www.amazon.com/Your-Product-Title-Here/dp/asinnumber

The first URL (top) is the one I did SEO for first. This is wrong because the second one is the one Google ranks. It can also contain, if you set up your product correctly, your main keyword. This will give you a huge leg-up in the SERPs. Add to that the fact that Amazon.com is a huge authority domain and you have a recipe for success.

I’ll be doing some more SEO for my products once I have lots of stock there to cope with traffic. No use getting traffic if there ain’t anything to buy eh.

Goals For Next Month

My goal for this month is to have ALL my products ‘In Stock’ and selling. I think by May I will have achieved this. I’m not going to add anymore new products to my inventory at this stage, even though I do have a list of products I’m going to investigate.

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Amazon Going Gangbusters!

Posted on March 5, 2014 by
Amazon Stats Feb 2014

Amazon Sales Feb 2014

Since I’m doing something new, selling on Amazon, I’m feeling more inspired to write in my blog more often. Here’s the latest update from my February sales.

Sales: 538
Profit: $1765.79 (Gross Sales $6902.81)

This profit has jumped a lot in just one month, so I’m pretty excited about that. Especially with the ridiculously small amount of time and effort I put into it. Added to the fact that not even half my products are in stock, I can hardly wait until things are going full steam.

One of the best things I’ve done this month is employ a buying agent in China. I hired her through Odesk and it is working out great. A native chinese speaker is able to negotiate and find much better deals and options than any westerner can. I have already saved a considerable amount of money on sourcing.

Anyway, I’ll keep this short and hopefully be back again next month with even bigger news!

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New Income Stream: Selling On Amazon!

Posted on February 2, 2014 by

Amazon FBAWow! It’s been way too long since I last wrote a blog post here. Ever since Google Penguin I’ve been kinda lazy. Affiliate marketing is still bringing in some decent money (down to 4 figures now :() and I spend only about 2 days per month on this now. I’ve kept ALL my websites as they still bring in traffic. As long as they keep making $$$ there’s no need to not renew them. Domains and hosting are dirt cheap.

Anyway, the newest thing I’m doing is selling physical products on Amazon through their FBA program. When I say physical products, I just mean things you can actully touch and use as opposed to ebooks, software and digital content (affiliate marketing). Selling through FBA means Amazon handles all of the shipping and customer support. All I have to do is send the stock into Amazon and they sell it for me on amazon.com.

I only started doing this in late October 2013, but already have made some good profit. January profits were $302.42. Might not seem like much, but the hours required to do this are less than one day a month. What makes me even more excited is that when I started affiliate marketing, it took me a lot longer to become profitable and really “get it”. With Amazon though it’s much easier so the progression will (hopefully) expediated.

The job basically comes down to finding good products which you can source from China or wholesale. There are a few criteria in terms of profitability and specifications, to make the shipping process easier. I’m actually possibly thinking of running local courses about how to sell on Amazon. Anyway, we’ll see how it goes for February and March.

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Negative SEO on My Site

Posted on May 14, 2012 by

I can’t believe this! I just checked my site backlinks in my WMT account and found that someone has created 40,296 backlinks to my site from the domain miningwise.com.

Negative SEO Example

Screenshot from WMT showing the negative SEO to my site

Unbelievable! I mean this site was already down due the Penguin update anyway. What really shakes me up is that there are some guys out there actually doing this stuff now.

I checked the site and it is definitely a splog. Crappy spun articles, which is probably the purpose of it really as to NAIL my site in the serps.

Looking at the whois the domain is registered to prime domains located in NY. I just did a quick search for them and couldn’t find any contact or business details. More worrying than that is that I found they have already been identified in a phishing scam. Here’s the link: http://www.phishtank.com/phish_detail.php?phish_id=1247412&frame=details

Bottom line, it’s hard to say what effect this had had on my site since it was already a bit down. I haven’t received any WMT link notifications for any of my sites, but I may be expecting something soon from this site. We’ll see….

 

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