How To Become An Amazon Seller - Dan Ashburn

SPEAKER_01 0:04

This is the Beyond the Story Podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. Dan Ashburn, what's up, dude? I'm good, man. Good to see you, Sebastian. Yeah, it's good to see you too, man. Ah, technology. You're literally across the world. Yeah, it feels like you're next door virtually.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

I know. This is pretty sweet as well, this new platform. I like it. I like it a lot.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

It is. Well, see, there are some benefits to being stuck at home for a year and a half, I guess. Right?

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Yeah, something like that. I've just uh I've just been traveling, navigating through Europe. So I'm quite pleased to be home in a routine for the next couple of weeks at least, anyway. So yeah, it's feeling good. Oh, good.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

So you got it all you got all the stay home out of your system, and uh now you're back home and glad to be home. So that's a different space than a lot of people uh have been in. But I share that uh that experience too as as business travel and leisure to start to return by the masses, it it appears here. But it is no place like home, right? Yeah, for sure, man. For sure. So uh your PR firm, uh Mutual Connection, the one and only Miss Victoria Kennedy, PR extraordinary herself, uh her team had reached out uh after her being on my show. And I said, hey, listen, any of your clients you're working with, I'd love to have conversations with them. And she sure as heck uh took that offer right up, and I'm glad she did. So that's how you and I connected here, and I sure do appreciate you taking some time out of your day to uh to hang out, man. I'm I'm I'm I'm curious to hear more uh about your story. So the best way to be able to extract that story I've found, or at least how I do it here on the Beyond the Story podcast, is just to back up to the beginning of the story and give us some context on what led you to present day and having a beautiful family and traveling the world, et cetera, et cetera. So if we can back up for a minute uh to where the story started, um I think that that that would be amazing.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

Yeah, sure. So um it's interesting. I've had this conversation a couple of times with friends and stuff, and I always struggle to understand how do I condense this down into kind of a couple of minutes that make sense. But really, the best way to understand it is really good childhood until about 12, 13. Parents split, went off to Tenerife and the Canary Islands in Spain and Europe. Um, and whilst, yes, enjoying the party scene out there as a teenager, kind of got hooked on the internet, and not just the internet, but the power of kind of how you can leverage the internet, make money, have impact, tap a button, see what happens, and then improve on tapping that button. Um, and I sort of grew up in the early boom of the internet in affiliate marketing, Amazon associate marketing, Google SEO was kind of my bag and I was known for it. Um, but then ended up in a in kind of a bad space out there with the wrong people in the party zone and stuff. So, long story short, four or five years later, after being out there, kind of mastering all this stuff in my teens, um, I ended up back in the UK, woke up one day, and two weeks later, I'm in the military. So I'd I'm I've joined the Air Force, I'm I'm doing some work with the Air Force, I've been in a couple of years, and I'm out in the Middle East at this point. And I'd been helping loads of like local businesses and um still doing my affiliate marketing stuff, my Google stuff, all the challenges that come with being sort of a single guy in the military. And um, yeah, decided that after that tour out there and it made me who I am today, that I wanted to go out and start sharing this skill set that I had for IT, tech, internet, marketing, etc., and help local businesses um with their marketing. So sent an email off or phoned my friend in the UK who was working in a call center at the time, and I said, trust me, quit your job. We're gonna start a marketing agency tomorrow. Managed to sort of talk my C CO, my commanding officer, into letting me leave the military early because I wrote a job offer to myself from my own company. Long story short, two or three months later, I'm I'm in my back bedroom of a one-bedroom apartment, living on a mattress on the floor. And my my friend at the time, who's now my business partner, um, was meant to join six months later. And he turned up the next day and said, I quit my job, let's do it. So it went from kind of my back bedroom to my mother-in-law's garage through winter to offices in the center of Birmingham, which is here in the UK, um, with 20, 30 staff. And then suddenly realized that whilst I was kind of on that journey of being an entrepreneur and sort of working for myself and employing people, I was a slave to the business and I just I was just miserable. Um and then came across the whole e-commerce piece, which felt like a real business to me. So um very quickly transitioned across, and that's kind of where it all began. So when you say e-commerce, in what sp in what capacity? So specifically, physical product uh products on Amazon is where I specialize now. Um, but in my journey, um, I kind of I one of my early successes, I helped a local jewelers, a high street jewelers, um, go from selling wedding rings and engagement rings to being what the UK's second largest bullion dealer on the internet. Uh two and a half million a month in sales. This is before the days of Shopify and Facebook ads, or it was early Facebook ads, mainly kind of old school SEO, uh PPC, et cetera. And then from there, um received an email one day about the power of kind of leveraging Amazon as a conversion conversion engine and then bringing in your own product from China. So you owned all of those sales versus selling other people's stuff like drop shipping or affiliate marketing. And I just got hooked because whereas I was earning at that time, I was earning okay, sort of fairly good money, building other people's businesses and was playing around with this e-commerce stuff. The business just felt really real to me, the physical product business. Um, and yeah, that was when I kind of had the epiphany that that's where the future is going, that's where everyone's spending their money, and that's where the growth is coming. And little did I know, kind of six or seven years later, e-commerce has just boomed, everything's going through the roof, and Amazon's where most of it's being spent. So um, yeah, it's been a wild journey.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

So you you talk a lot about how how you can navigate selling on e-commerce platforms. Let's talk about that for a minute.

SPEAKER_00 6:01

Yeah, for sure. So um there are lots of platforms out there, and there's lots of dollars and pounds and euros and money across the world being spent across these platforms. We all know Amazon's the kind of big boy in that space. Um, recent stat, more one in every two dollars in the US that's spent online is spent on Amazon. But when it comes to platforms, it's just understanding like focus where the volume is. So Amazon is where the volume is, and then really understanding what the main levers are that drive that platform. So for Amazon, uh it's understanding how to launch and make products visible, how to then get reviews, how to use advertising to drive that velocity and continue the visibility, and then understanding how to continually improve that product. It's the same with Walmart that are quickly catching up and these other platforms that are coming through. It's just understanding kind of what makes that platform tick, what drives visibility, and then just understanding your customer and sticking to that journey.

SPEAKER_01 6:57

All right. So let's just say I'm a stay-at-home dad and I decide that I want to start selling um blue uh light internet glasses on Amazon because I got a pair and I really like them and they've really helped me sleep better and whatever blue light glasses do. Plus, I realize if I have a product on Amazon, I may have some fair, you know, a fair amount of success. What does that look like? I know that's kind of a loaded question, but if you were sitting with me in the back of an Uber and I ask you in you know five minutes or less, um, you know, how that would work.

SPEAKER_00 7:28

Simplicity of it is really step one, validate the opportunity. So understand the competition, competition being reviews, and understand volume and the profitability of that product. So we're looking for a product with a minimum 25% profit margin, ideally 75, 100% ROI, which is going to drive the cash on cash return. And understand how can I differentiate this product? Who are my competitors? And do I believe I have the budget to launch it? So if a product's doing, say, 50 units a day, do I have the budget to be matching that velocity and gain that visibility to then drive profit? Once you've done all that initial research, which there's sort of seven or eight years into this business now, there's loads of proven frameworks. We have one over at Titan Network, quick checklist. Yes, it ticks all these boxes. We're then looking for a good quality supplier because, as you know, reviews are everything on Amazon. You live and die by reviews. So alibar.com, great website for finding suppliers. Use the filters on the left-hand side, find the ones that have all the different certifications and testing and have been verified. And just start having conversations, kind of like you do in Facebook Messenger. You just start messaging these factories, get pricing based on a minimum order quantity of maybe 500 or a thousand units, and order two or three samples from factories that you like the look of that you get a good feeling from. They're having a good conversation, pricing's coming in at a decent price that you can make profit with, and then receive and test those samples. So definitely blue light blocking glasses, very competitive products. Wouldn't recommend them, but test them for what their intended use is. If you're someone that struggles with that, better yet, you understand the customer, test those products. Once you've done that, place your order and it's now start, it's like building a page on a website. You need to get some good quality images together, complete your keyword research for visibility, and then write a good compelling listing that's benefit-driven. Sell the outcome, not the not the product itself. If I buy a drill, I'm not buying a drill, I'm buying a hole in the wall. Sell me the convenience of drilling that hole in the wall, sell me the convenience of how easy it is to tidy up all the dust afterwards because this drill's got this widget on it that collects that dust. And write a really compelling listing. Um, and then launch. And launching is as simple as understanding well, I'm not gonna go after blue light glasses because that's gonna be super competitive. Too many reviews, I'm gonna have to generate a lot of sales to get visible. Let's go after blue light glasses for men, bit longer tail, a bit more specific intent in there. It's specific to men, so I can make all my imagery and my listing directed towards men and start generating sales using advertising and what we call cashback offers or rebates, which is where you get someone to order it through a promotion and then they earn that credit back. Generate those few orders, and then finally it's it's on to just mastering advertising. And you get this right, you put a couple of weeks really hard effort in in the beginning, go through the process with the supplier, then you're running the business in kind of an hour a day, just sort of tweaking and turning the dials to dial in those pieces of the process. It's it sounds simple, but that's kind of the the start to find out.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

I know there's a lot of moving parts. That's that was a great 30,000-foot perspective on how it gonna well. First of all, anybody can sell a product on Amazon, is that right?

SPEAKER_00 10:27

Absolutely anyone, yeah. But many people believe that Amazon are all these big brands, but the reality is the majority of sales on Amazon are third-party sales from people like me who sit here in my in my home office here in the UK and and drive eight figures of sales on the platform a year. So literally anyone we do is go to Amazon, search Amazon Seller Central. Um you can set up an individual account or pay $30 a month or $39 a month for a professional account, which you'll need eventually when you get going. Um and yeah, you can start.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

So hold on a second. Alibaba, I my experience with them has been less than pleasurable because it takes 59 weeks to get the product once you order it, and then you get some just weird emails that come through and asking you to check out our new collection. And so my my experience, but that's probably be I was just I was trying to find that's what it was. I was going to put together a podcast starter kit for my new students for my program. And I was gonna get a mic and a headphones and all this stuff. So I was trying to find if they had brand name products that I could actually buy. They didn't, it was all aftermarket stuff, and I had bought a couple of mics, um, but again, aftermarket stuff on there. That was the my that was the first of my Alibaba experience on here. Is there something that that ties the two together so that you're able to buy the inventory, set up the Amazon store, and as people purchase, the product is drop shipped?

SPEAKER_00 11:45

No, so that's that's drip that's drop shipping as a model, okay. Um, and not typically uh one that you can do with Amazon FBA. Some people do around the rules, but it's not typically compliant. And to be honest, there's very thin margin in doing that because the whole point is we want to private label a product and own a hundred percent of the sales because we own the listing. When you do that, where you're selling someone else's brand, someone else's products, and you're kind of trying to do the whole drop shipping piece. There might be 10 other sellers selling that same product, and you might only win 5% of the sales, and it kind of is not really worth it. The secret source or the one thing that really drives this business model and the success of it is owning the full listing because you own the rights to the brand. You went to Fiverr.com, you thought of a name, you checked the trademark. You went to Fiverr.com and had a designer designer logo. You then worked with your Chinese supplier to print that logo on the packaging and the of the product. And therefore, you own the rights to that brand. You get a quick trademark for a few hundred dollars, and then no one else can sell that product on Amazon. So if you then can get that microphone to show up in Amazon for podcast microphone, 100% of all those clicks and sales are going to your bank account because you own 100% of the rights to that product. That is just gold right there.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

My I'd be taking notes, but I need to pay attention. And I'm just gonna listen to my own episode back over again. If you're listening to this right now and you've been trying to figure out this whole e-commerce game, it's never too late to get in the game because there's constantly something new being created. There's never in a million years did we think that hand sanitizer would be flying off the shelves and one of the best pieces of swag you could offer someone as a brand until 2020 came along, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:20

Yeah, it's amazing. And it people say to me, Dan, is it too late to get in the game? I've been doing this kind of seven years now. Um, and my answer to it is always absolutely not, because the rate of buyers on Amazon is outgrowing the rate of sellers continuously, exponentially. There is so much demand on the platform that there's so much opportunity and with seasonality and trends and other competitors going out of stock. It's a constant flywheel. And if you get it right, we recently launched a new brand on Amazon, brand new account, and we took it from a standing start to $130,000 a month in 64 days. It was it was between 60 and 80 days because that that was our target. Uh, and we were able to do that from a standing start in a in a very competitive category. And that was literally this this year. That was that was start of 2021. Um, so it's never too late. There's lots of demand and opportunity. And I'll be honest, what's happened recently with the pandemic has only accelerated it. We've just seen five to 10 years of accelerated growth in e-commerce as a result of the pandemic. So it's it's yeah, what else are you gonna do? Yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

What else are you gonna do? Nowhere to go, and there's yeah, where are you gonna get it? Number one, number two. I mean, I don't I think a majority of people's brain work this way, which is check Amazon first and then Walmart, Costco, everywhere else, because that's just what technology has trained us to do. So advertising, you talk a lot about that. Obviously, you can't just put a tree in the middle of the woods and expect, or a tree in the middle of the woods, a product in the middle of the woods and expect people to find it. I'll be here all week, folks, twice on Sunday. Uh, but um, as far as advertising is concerned, you've got to drive traffic to an attention to the product. Is that done through the Amazon ads platform or is that done as a conglomerate?

SPEAKER_00 15:02

No, so so yeah, I'm my my real my having tested every single advertising platform channel out there. I spend six figures in in Facebook advertising and I've got businesses in the dental space, I've got other things going on. But with Amazon specifically, the only thing we need to do is focus on the Amazon advertising sources. When people get started, they think they need Instagram accounts and Facebook pages and websites and all this stuff. And yes, you need those profiles to get certain verifications, but all you need to do when launching that product is focusing on Amazon's own advertising system. It's called sponsored product advertising, similar to Google. You know, when you see the kind of sponsored result, the top of the results. I did it for my book. Is that the same platform? Yeah, exactly. The same platform. There's there's various forms of advertising in there, but when getting going, all you need to do is the pay-per-click, the sponsored product advertising. Um then initially understanding who it is you're targeting. Like I say, let's not go after the really competitive keywords. Let's go after the longer tail stuff where the customer's telling you, I specifically want a blue one or a stainless steel one or the men, focus there first because Amazon is a conversion conversion engine. It likes to see conversions happen. Um, and then once you've gained a free reviews, then start broadening out your horizons. So the advertising's simple. Um, when launching, you're going to contribute roughly 30 to 40% of the revenue towards advertising. When you've got a few reviews on the listing, three to six months in, we budget a 10% advertising contribution. So if we've got a product doing 30% margin, we give 10% to Amazon for advertising, it means we're netting 20% on the bottom line after all fees and cogs and everything. And then you just look at it like a numbers game. How many products can I launch and how quickly can I launch them?

SPEAKER_01 16:42

I got it. So the the advertising is driven based on ongoing sales.

SPEAKER_00 16:46

Continuously, yeah, exactly. And then just driving goods, good product listing, good quality product reviews make the engine go round, and it is simple as releasing good quality products and releasing more of them. And that's really the aim of the game. Hell of a time to be alive, huh? Yeah, it is right now. There's the perfect storm going on. It's it only takes a quick Google search to realize that one online consumer shopping has gone through the roof, but two, all the big VC Wall Street money had nowhere to place it, and they're placing it in e-commerce. So it's kind of like the perfect storm. And I've got friends that are making lots of cash flow, profit in the business, but they're also becoming overnight millionaires because these VCs are coming in and seeing the value of what we do and they're purchasing the businesses. And because there's so many uh buyers out there wanting these businesses, the multiples are going from a two or a three to a six or a seven. Um and it's a it's a great, great time to be alive in e-commerce for sure.

SPEAKER_01 17:40

Definitely is. Well, we're almost out of time here, but I this has been incredible information. I've learned a ton, and I'm sure my my listeners have as well. Where's the best place for people to connect with you online?

SPEAKER_00 17:50

Yeah, sure. Connect with me on Instagram, Dunashburn UK, or you can connect me on LinkedIn, send me a send me a connection there or Facebook as well.

SPEAKER_01 17:57

Excellent. All those links are gonna be available in the show notes. That's the description of this episode if you're wondering what in the world a show note is. Dan, this has been incredible information. I'm gonna have to have you back on the show. I know we didn't extract probably a a third of how your entire world operates, but it's been great to get to know you better and uh see that you know it is truly possible to have a positive work-life balance while seeing results on here, which was part of um what uh what your team had presented to me before even getting you on the show. So it's great to see that you're living that out uh and that you're sharing uh, you know, your your gift with others to help them uh better understand what they don't know that they don't know about the world of e-commerce. Well, I look forward to staying in touch with you, Dan. Thanks again for hanging out. Uh and you have to come back sometime.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

Yeah, I appreciate you, Sebastian. Thanks for having me on, though.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

You got it, bud. Until next time, friends. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Beyond the Story Podcast. Be sure to appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. Be sure to appreciate it. Signing off from the podcast, launchlab.com studios. We'll talk to you next time.