284 : Greg Jeffries – Drive customers to your store with a strong SEO plan
Can you compete with Amazon and have your own buybox? Can you take the significant changes made with Amazon and Ebay and start today on your own path? Learn some skills that are truly transferable across all marketplaces and web sites.
Mentioned:
Sponsors
Gaye’s Million Dollar Arbitrage List
Transcript: (note- this is a new tool I am trying out so it is not perfect- it does seem to be getting better)
Stephen: [00:00] Wanted to take a second and recognize my sponsors this week, you know, [inaudible] million dollar arbitrage as edge and list group. That’s a mouthful. It is. But guess what? It’s a great opportunity. You can build a big Amazon business. You don’t need a lot of capital when you start. I mean we all started, you know, um, most of it started selling books and then you move into retail arbitrage that is the place that you can turn your money the fastest and online arbitrage. And so by having that skill set, by learning those skill sets, you can get the best bang for your buck. And so gaze group will help you learn online arbitrage. It’s, it’s more than just a list service. They’re going to give you a whole bunch of actionable inventory every single day. Write Monday through Friday. However, there’s also a mentorship that goes on and that mentorship is so important because sometimes it’s great to know what to buy, but it’s more important to understand why to buy it.
Stephen: [01:02] But yeah, that’s that. You know, learning the fish are just getting fit. You really want to learn because ultimately you want to strike it on your own and this is a great way to do it. So how about seven days free trial. About a free trial, right? Very, very cool. So it’s amazing. Freedom Dot com. Forward slash is the mouthful. The word momentum. You’ve got to use a hyphen and you put in the word arbitrage. So it’s amazing. Freedom Dot [inaudible], forward slash momentum dash arbitrage, and you’re going to get a free trial in gaze group. You got to tell her I sent you, right? I also have the link in the episode, but it’s such a great opportunity. So she has amazing, amazing. I’m in that group so you’ll see me there and amazing, amazing person who’s there to answer your questions, who’s there to help lead you and help guide you.
Stephen: [01:50] And that’s what gay does. She does it every single day. The testimonials are real. Go take a look. You will be blown away and again, it’s a free trial. I have the link on this episode to reach in your seller labs, Jeff Cohen and the team. They have blown me away with this scope project. We use this all the time for our business. We do a lot of private label. We also do a lot of wholesale and wholesale bundles or multi-packs, that kind of thing, which a lot of people do, but we use a scope to help us figure out what are the key words and so it’s really simple. You basically figure out where you’re going to sell, what you’re going to sell, what category, find that lake product, find the top couple sellers and find their keywords. Boom magic. There you go. You copy the best because it’s working.
Stephen: [02:39] And guess what? That’s a proof of concept and scope allows you to do that. So it’s seller labs.com, forward slash scope, seller labs.com, forward slash scope. Use the code word momentum and you’re going to get a couple of days free trial and you’re going to save a little bit of money and you’re going to get some free keywords. It’s worth every penny. I’m in that group. Come and check me out. So our labs.com, forward slash scope. Again, use the word momentum solutions for e-commerce. Karen Lunker, great, great, great group. I’ve been using them for a long time and I guess it’s over two years and I’m in there and I pay just like everybody else. Yeah, she’s a sponsor my show, but she makes me pay and I got the same $50 discount that you can get. Oh, by the way, you’re going to get that through my link and my link only.
Stephen: [03:25] Oh, and you’re also going to get the free inventory health analysis. Great Way to start 2018, get your inventory in line and Karen will help you do that. We use them for everything basically, uh, you know, long-term storage fees coming up. Guess what, show evaluate. She’ll make some recommendations and I’ll say, yeah, check, check, check, check these out, this return, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And magically it’s done. I love it, love it, love it. I love the fact that they take and get rid of stranded inventory for me. I see it in there. And then next time I go in and it’s gone. Love it. Love it, love it. Got An ip infringement, she’s going to help you work your way through that. This is the kind of service that you get from Karen Locker, that’s solutions for the number for e-commerce solutions for e-commerce dot com forward slash momentum, right? So you’ve got a forward slash momentum and you’re going to save $50 a month, 600 bucks a year by just clicking that link. She pays me. I don’t want to hide that, I never do. I’m always upfront about that, but it doesn’t cost you anything additional and you’re going to get that inventory health report. The only way you get that is through mind link the solutions, the number for e-commerce dot com, forward slash momentum.
Speaker 2: [04:39] Welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of e-commerce selling. Today. Here’s your host, Steven Peterson.
Stephen: [04:53] Welcome back to the e-commerce momentum podcast. This is episode 200 and eighty four, greg jefferies. Greg is an internet marketer, warned you up front. What’s cool is he’s an internet marketer and that’s the opportunity because the marketplace is changing, right? Those of us listening right now, and this is very current, big changes, announced an Amazon is last week or two big changes at Ebay to if you’re an Ebay seller and I’m therefore I’m going to take a reach and say, well, guess what, this is going to mean that they’re going to be big changes in Walmart and jet and new egg and sears. If it’s still out there and and all the rest of them, there’s going to be big changes and so what do you do when you’re sitting here saying, Whoa, I built my business. I used to import everything from China, send it all to Amazon and let it sit there and I have to buy a container because it lasts me a year.
Stephen: [05:43] Well now you’re sitting there saying, Whoa, on that in the next six months I might not make money. What other options do I have? Is now the time to do your website? Well, if you do, how are you going to get traffic? And that’s the reason I brought [inaudible] on because you know, you’ll hear I get approached a bunch of PR companies and what I liked what he said and I liked, I liked his answers because I think he’s got some experience in econ world and I think it’s very relevant. Worked for a company that didn’t make it and I think it’s very relevant. I think the, the, the conversation that we should be having is, hey, you know, the sky isn’t falling, you know, this is not a, the end, this is a pivot point. This is an opportunity and if you don’t pivot, your competitor will.
Stephen: [06:25] So therefore pivot. Figured this out, work your way through, take this opportunity and invest in some other things. And I think greg does a great job. I think it’s going to qualify this too. He sells a course. I don’t benefit in any way and I’m not, you know, and an affiliate or anything like that. So I let them pitch course. I’m warning you up front, but I think it’s fair. I think if you can buy time, you know, I bought a lot of courses over time. If you can buy time and take advantage of something and his knowledge and he transfers that knowledge, it’s where some money and so therefore you know he should be able to offer it. So let’s get into the podcast. Let’s get started on pivoting our businesses. Welcome back to the e-commerce momentum podcast. Very excited about today’s guest because he is going to help us figure out how to market our products better, how to drive traffic, how to create our own, I guess kind of our own future.
Stephen: [07:18] I mean it’s one of the big topics that’s out there, especially with all these changes out in the marketplace that are outside of our control and they will never be in your control. Amazon will never give you control. Ebay will never give you control. Nobody’s giving you control unless you do it yourself. And then you’re limited to because some of the techniques Greg’s going to talk about are limited by Google today and they changed their algorithm and then that changes. So you do have to evolve. These aren’t set in stone, but these skills, and it’s interesting. In our pre interview we started talking about the common things we’re seeing marketplaces and starting to use these concepts and I just think it’s fascinating. I think Greg’s going to teach us something, something that we haven’t been thinking about. Welcome Greg. Thank you for having me. Greg, Jefferies, uh, is, has his own company, has his own thing and I’m going to let them pitch his stuff and Steve does not benefit.
Stephen: [08:08] So I’m going to let him pitch. He’s going to pitches a ceo a domination stuff and that’s when I get approached by, and I’m not bragging, but I get approached by PR companies everyday and there’s always got the best thing in the world. Oh, this is the new. It’s dynamic and usually I blow him off, but this one intrigued me because when, when I was talking with a PR company, I’m like, these are the things that are going on in our industry. These are the things that we’re seeing. Can he help? Can he offer some advice? And some back and forth went back and forth and I think you have a couple of things. I think you’re describing some things that I’ve not heard before or not thought enough about and some people are going to be like, dusty, this is old news, this is easy.
Stephen: [08:49] Um, but you know, Steve’s not that bright so he has to be told a few times. So, you know, Greg, one of the things that we see in our world, and I want to relate this to how you got to where you are, because I think this is interesting. You were in, you know, you’ve got a whole myriad of education. You’ve got graphics background, um, sales background and uh, some e-commerce working for some e-commerce company. So I think it’s all relevant. But the thing that happened back then was you saw drastic change, fair. And today, this week, both Ebay and Amazon less two weeks, three weeks have made significant changes that impact my wife and my business, my friends who are listening business, my listeners, businesses, large, massive, giant sellers, businesses that change. Is that ever going to go? I’m kind of joking that it’s never going to go away, but really is it ever gonna go away?
Speaker 3: [09:51] I don’t think so. It’s only gonna get, um, not to sound like negative or anything, but it’s only going to get worse and worse for the vendor.
Stephen: [09:58] It’s. So how do you adapt? I mean, when you look back at your old company, I mean, how did they adapt to this expanding marketplace right now? How many marketplaces where they up to,
Speaker 3: [10:09] I don’t know the exact amount, but probably somewhere around 20 or more.
Stephen: [10:12] OK. So, so everybody tells us, all right, this is, uh, this is lesson number [inaudible] Greg, we need to be everywhere. I remember sitting with Gary Vaynerchuk, Gary V, and literally I’m six feet from him and I remember asking them that question like, you know, how do I tell the marketplace? Because he’s always got people telling you, oh, you gotta go here. He’s like, Steve, you gotta be on every marketplace. That was his advice. That works sometimes, but sometimes it can be a problem, right?
Speaker 3: [10:39] Absolutely. And it’s a, it’s kind of a massive, a can a headache if you don’t have the right tools and softwares. That was the previous company I worked at. Um, these marketplaces are popping up so quickly that a lot of times there isn’t a software suite to manage them all as quickly, so like they, they aren’t able to integrate them as quickly as they’re popping up cause you know, we’re all familiar with Amazon, Ebay, but there’s the, the jet dot coms, there’s the real zoo Lilly, new egg, Rattan, like, and those are just a handful of those are the ones that maybe people on this call are familiar with, but then there’s like 20, 30, 40 other ones and you know, they, they sometimes those come and go, but there’s so many. So it’s a, it’s a lot to manage. Um, so I would definitely say you need some sort of software, but even the software that exists, um, it’s a little bit limited like bit there. It’s challenging for even like, I know one of the bigger ones is like channel advisor advisory, challenging for even softwares like channel advisor to keep up with how quickly these marketplaces are popping up.
Stephen: [11:49] So the, the lesson because that company didn’t do well, your company fare well, not you or anything. You worked here that they didn’t fare well because they spread themselves too. I mean, that’s really what it is and I agree with you because I’m expanding us into poshmark for example, and this I have not come across the software to manage that, that would link our inventory with these other systems and it’s like, Whoa, I’m, that’s an issue because that means, you know, if I only have to have this particular item and I put it on both marketplaces, it’s unrealistic that they both would sell, but it happens and then all of a sudden you start to try to scale that out to six or 8,000 skews and then you have variations of those skews. You’re talking nightmares. I mean, it’s, it’s unmanageable at that point. Right? And then you have to throw so much resources out at your margins are now gone. You’re, it’s really a circle.
Speaker 3: [12:42] And here, I don’t know if we want to address this here, but each market place has their own terms, um, both in just percentages and when they pay you and stuff on the fees that they take out. So that each one is completely different.
Stephen: [12:58] Yeah, I mean that’s a real issue. I mean, those are real issues that most people don’t think about. It’s like, well, you know, um, I’ve not found out how poshmark pays to be honest with you, but you know, for Amazon for example, we’ve been fortunate. We’ve been selling for so long. We have daily pants. Literally we can sell a product today and get pickup our money tomorrow and that we’re very, very fortunate now. It’s, I think it’s two weeks for any new seller or I’ve seen people then go and finance that and can get daily payouts, but they have to pay a third party company a vague, a percentage. Um, and that really puts a burden long-term. Again, you know, to me your stack in your stack of dimes. And I just think that that is not the long-term play that Steve’s opinion. So let’s talk about this because I think that this pattern that, you know, it’s funny how you get into, you know, seo is because you started to notice, I mean, it sounded to me like the way you like had this Aha moment, the lights open, the, the, the clouds opened in that light shining down on you when you saw all these marketplaces. Liken that to today. Uh, in the Seo world.
Speaker 3: [14:13] Yeah. So my big a tiffany with since, uh, when I was working with this E-com, converting my last job and I had a, my big epiphany was um, in the, in the day I worked there. And then, and then nights and weekends I worked on Internet marketing, affiliate marketing stuff, and I kind of made this connection of like, I saw all these marketplaces we’re selling home. I was like, man, this is, this is the exact same thing that’s happening with, um, basically all these other major sites out there. Like there’s each of these little categories. E-Commerce is just one kind of category. These marketplaces. Then you’ve got things like course marketplaces like Udemy and skillshare. You’ve got within e-commerce, you’ve got other e-com marketplaces that like for print on demand stuff like red bubble, Zazzle, café press, um, and then, you know, there’s just marketplaces for everything.
Speaker 3: [15:10] And the reason why the or the advantage I saw there is, is you don’t have to be like, you don’t have to create all this unique content or sell tons of unique con, uh, products like for um, for, for us, for instance, on the E-commerce, we represented a dyson vacuum. So we’re able to luckily, you know, each marketplace is different, you know, Amazon, Ebay, you can sell anything, but some of these other marketplaces are a little more niche. So not every product is something that you can list on that marketplace or it would be a good fit. Um, luckily vacuums was something that kind of was something that applied for a lot of those marketplaces, but I liked that the product didn’t change but just kind of
Stephen: [15:55] spread it around and stretched it. Totally different marketplaces. So that’s a question I have about that because that makes me think one time I went to a new egg and I remember seeing somebody selling sneakers on new egg and I’m like, you’re never going to sell any of those sneakers. I mean, if somebody just listed them there, that is a good fit. Um, because when you go to Newegg to buy electronics, that’s what they’re known for. They want to. And that’s a, that’s a miss. I think that’s a big miss for that company because that took resources for its energy. Somebody sold them. Oh Greg, I’ve got the big idea to take this shoe company. We’re going all the way, we’re going on to it. And it was like a, what’s new APP, right? And so, so when you’re, when you do approach these different marketplaces with the same. So let’s use your vacuum, for example. Is the pitch the same on Ebay as it is on Amazon as it is on new egg as it is unseen? Ears as it is on racketing?
Speaker 3: [16:48] I’m probably not like, honestly, since we, uh, this company I was with had, had a lot of success with Ebay was our big, big, um, you know, the longest standing relationship and then we, you know, put ourselves on Amazon, but a lot of times these companies, these marketplaces were actually like find you and stuff. So a lot of times they were the ones reaching out to us like new egg I think reach out to us and I think the reason dyson you say w w vacuums on a technology site but a vac a dyson and we, you know, we also sold I robot, those are kind of like the more techie I’m cutting edge vacuums if you want to go say that and um, since they kind of appeal to that sort of demographic. So that worked. But yeah, shoes I think I’ve seen like coffee mugs or something on new agonists like as a bundled and it’s like, what does the coffee mug have to do with like a vacuum or something?
Stephen: [17:45] Fine. Again, it’s easy to list a, Oh, I’m going to be on all every marketplace. Gary’s advice. I think what he meant, and he uh, you know, he didn’t have to say this, Steve has to be a little smarter. He’s saying every relevant marketplace. I mean, I think that that word is missing, but I’m sure that’s what he inferred. Like, you know, the, you know, put it out there. So relevancy. Now when you approach this Seo, right? So when I’m looking to, you know, to optimize for searching to get my products found, how do you deal with, you know, an Amazon versus an Ebay versus my shopify site versus a new way. I mean they’re all different, aren’t they see the seo the same as a concept the same and then there’s the marketplaces are different.
Speaker 3: [18:28] Yeah, it’s pretty much the same. I mean there’s only two main aspects of Seo. That’s the content and then backlinks, which all that means is just other authoritative links or links in general pointing to that page or post or piece of content. And there’s like the, the main to the simplified explanation of Seo. So it does, it’s not some kind of magical Voodoo formula and that’s all it pretty much comes down to. And the reason that these sites or these pages maybe of listings on Amazon or Ebay or new egg racket town, wherever the reason that they rank for some of these really long, obscure low competition keywords is because of the authority of the root domain. I’m, it’s not because that particular page isn’t necessarily has like a lot of authority or links or whatever. So they’re usually pretty easy to outrank. I’m the only reason we were kind of explained this in the pre interview of um, the, there isn’t a lot of competition a lot of times for these long tail keywords.
Speaker 3: [19:34] So if there isn’t, if Google can’t find anything better to rank, it’s going to by default, like rank an Amazon page because Amazon’s got like the Amazon as a whole has like billions of links pointing to it. So it’s like, well, how about this, what do you think about this search result? Because that’s the best result can find. But I mean, you can outrank these, you know, marketplace sites, your own, um, you know, a site or store like shopify or your own domain as well as your specific, um, stores or poster with just some links because they don’t have to be like the best links that can just kind of be, um, lower quality links, but just the fact that your page, your specific url to your store or your product on that store has more links or any links, uh, compared to, uh, you know, so whatever generic page or whatever that Amazon or the Google is ranking for you, it’s, it’s gonna give it a significant edge over every, everything else and the fact that, um, Amazon or Ebay, uh, has, has all that authority to begin with, helps it even more, if that makes sense as opposed to your own domain, which you’d have to kind of build on that.
Stephen: [20:51] Pull back with you for most of it now, because I just want to make sure people get this because this is complicated. It. I know it’s easy, especially in your world, but it’s not easy, right? Because we sell, you know, every person listening to this sells a different item and sometimes many different variations of it and they got all these other competitors and then they have to deal with Amazon, selling them and even if they have the best price and everything’s great and Amazon might still take the buy box from us. So even though you got the best price and you’ve got in stock and it’s an half an hour from my house, Amazon says, well, you know, that’s cool, but here’s ours and it’s more money or we don’t even have it in stock. Those things are real. And I think that that’s that learning algorithm as they figured that out. But here, let me get back to this. So the root, the root authority, that’s the main thing. So Amazon, because they put out so much content because they had been doing it for so long, consistently with, with, with confidence. That’s a real dominant root domain. Correct.
Speaker 3: [21:53] Yeah. I’ll, I’ll give you, um, kind of, uh, you dummy example since I’m more familiar with that. So the fact that Youtube has massive authority for a know they get tons of traffic and tons of links pointing all over the internet to their site or different pages. What I did with my, my courses since I teach courses as well is a lot of times literally by just I’m calling your, your, um, your course some variation of a long tail keyword. It will rank on page one with no links pointed to it, literally just published the course has been probably within a couple of days or weeks. It’s on page one.
Stephen: [22:37] Pull again. So give me an example there. So, so, so, so let’s do a course on a drinking water, right? So I want to put up my course for drinking water and there’s lots of other courses there. You’re saying that I can take my drinking water course and get it shown. So when I go to somebody who goes to you, to me to search, I need to learn how to drink water. I can be found.
Speaker 3: [23:02] Yes. I mean, and you may have to, it may not be as easy depending on whatever keyword you, I’m the target or whatever, but um, the, the, the, it works. Yeah, that’s, that’s as simple as it gets. Like one example was, um, a couple of years ago I had this course on launch jacking which just basically means taking advantage of trends and specifically in the Internet Marketing Niche, so taking advantage of internet marketing information, product launches that are, you know, just being published and stuff. And I didn’t even realize it, but a friend was like, hey, how did you, I noticed that your course, it ranks on page one for the word launch jacking. And I was like, really? So I googled and I was like, yeah, sure enough, I’m like, top three position that never touched it, never did anything to it. It was just ranking just on the authority of Youtube. And uh, so that’s a strategy that you can use for these, um, you know, for these stores or um.
Stephen: [24:00] Oh wait, I think steve just caught up. Hold on, pause for second. So you’re saying Steve wants to put a course on how to drink water, just going to put it on his own website. However, by putting on huge to me and then having to link coming through, I get the benefit of strength even though I have it located on my site. Is that correct?
Speaker 3: [24:23] I’m just talking about just publishing it straight to you, to me and I’ll kind of make this connection. So the year we were talking before about um, you know, Eh, all these marketplaces, uh, they’re, they’re a great place to be, but they take all, you know, they, they take their commissions off the top, they’re going to get their money, you know, and we’re left with the Crohn’s. I’m so and so, it’s, it’s almost like, yeah, you have to be there. Ours, it’s a great starting point to be on these marketplaces because they already have traffic. They already have authority. Like if you’re selling a product on Amazon.com, you’re not having to, you’re only having to try to sell them on your particular product, but you’re not trying to convince them to trust you because it’s Amazon. They already trust Amazon, so you’re leveraging their authority same way with you to me, so that helps selling things to, if you can just get them to the page and you’re leveraging the credibility of the enemy, the credibility of new egg and stuff. So, um, it’s so my brand grows on,
Stephen: [25:28] on Google just because I sell stuff on Amazon because that gives authority and Google says, Hey, that’s authority because that’s selling, therefore my brand benefits just because of being connected with them. Is that better?
Speaker 3: [25:44] Yeah. And I’ll finish off by saying, um, so I was going to make the connection between like the marketplaces and you’re on your own sites or properties. So from my experience in the company I was working with our website made significantly less sales volume then, you know, Amazon or new anchor Ebay. But we made more profit for that because the margins, we had higher margins, you know, weren’t paying 15, 20 percent off the top. Um, so I think that I believe in marketplaces are a great place to start to kind of kick-start things to give you. So you don’t have to like play the slow game of Seo or a spend a lot of money out of pocket for PBC or ad words and stuff to get that traffic so you can use your sales and profits that you get from these marketplaces to then invest in your own, um, you know, assets and web properties and stuff because those are going to be a little bit more long game, but they’re going to be a sustainable and something that you’re more in control of because, you know, like you said, uh, what does it last week? Ebay and Amazon both came down with some changes in their terms and they can do that when they really want
Stephen: [26:56] do it. Um, you know, there’s just no chance that they’re going to stop that. And so. So I think that this is a good point to pause on this because right now, uh, one of the big changes in Amazon was a long-term storage fees at a hundred and eighty one days. So six months you’re going to start getting assessed these fees monthly. And so a bunch of people are going to pull back a bunch of inventory and they’re trying to figure out what to do and so, you know, to me as I sit back and think about it, I, I, you know, I’m fortunate because I have a warehouse so I’m fortunate that I have that. I get that, but I’m not against a private label seller pulling back inventory and then partnering and selling to me wholesale and I was, I was just listening to Andy Simons was doing his podcast before we recording this and one of the.
Stephen: [27:39] I wanted to chime in with that because I do buy some wholesale from Andy, but if you’re a private label seller that’s getting ready to get hit with all these things, use the money, put back that inventory, put it in my warehouse. You and I partner, I buy it from you. You get the benefit of being in my warehouse. We work out terms, whatever. However, then you take this money and is greg suggest you build out your own brand. You finally get going on this thing and you start building this audience of your own. And you start learning how to drive traffic to your site from guys like Greg. That’s what he does. He helps you figure out how to get traffic to either your site or to to Amazon site for your products. All those things can work and now is probably the time where you’ve got to get off the pot because you’re being forced to.
Stephen: [28:25] In the old days, we’d send all our inventory and you don’t have that luxury. Now I’m not saying you need to go get a warehouse. I’m saying you could partner with others and you know guys like me, but there’s a ton of me’s out there to somebody you can trust who knows your brand, who you know their brand, you know their store names. So there’s that map and you can do all the legal things to make sure there’s no price fixing, but then you can deal with it and start looking at this as a standalone business. Because Greg, correct me if I’m wrong, had your company really dealt better with this as a controlling the marketplaces where they were controlling their cash and controlling all those other issues. And then really driving their traffic the correct way. The outcome could have been different. Fair.
Speaker 3: [29:06] Yeah, absolutely. I’ll tell you the two main weak weaknesses that kind of caused them to collapse. So eventually I kind of fell through for a number of different reasons. One, a big reason was we would, yeah, we did stretch ourselves too thin between too many marketplaces. Instance, they, we had a lot of money away inventory going out and money, you know, going out to buy that inventory to be able to sell it. Um, but since each one pays you on a different schedule and one may be 30 days, one may be 60 days, maybe 90. So when you’ve got multiple of those payment terms, it’s messed up because, you know, dyson’s are not achieved vacuum for instance. So we may have to have to put um, you know, a million 2,000,000 down for the next order to come in for the deal that’s coming up for like black Friday or something.
Speaker 3: [29:56] But if we didn’t get paid, where are we going to get the credit, you know? Then we had no credit lines extended with dyson. And uh, you know, banks and stuff, and so that was own very dangerous path. That was weakness, number one. And then the second thing that kind of, you knoww, w they didn’t plan ahead I guess as these marketplaces we’re evolving and kind of popping up everywhere. So it was great when there was just Ebay, you know, they’re making millions of dollars and it was just Ebay, but then then, you know, Amazon and all these other ones and real a law and stuff. And um, they unfortunately chose to scale with people instead of software. And when they finally came circle back around and said, hey, we need like we cannot scale anymore with people we have to fix this problem and scale with software and figuring out solutions.
Speaker 3: [30:49] It W, w we couldn’t, we couldn’t catch up fast enough. So I would highly, I know there may not be like the perfect ideal software, but there are um, kind of tiered levels. Software’s out there that you can kind of use as kind of stepping stone your way up as you start to grow. If you want to really evolve into like an eight figure nine figure business and stuff because you absolutely, I don’t see how you could possibly manage an and keep all this stuff organized when you’re talking about jet.com and Amazon, Ebay and it’s the, um, I forget the term, but the, you start with like a quantity quantity of [inaudible], but you just want to make sure that you don’t oversell on any one of those platforms in real time. So you need that, that feature or whatever because that’s a headache too. <Unk>.
Speaker 3: [31:40] I mean if you sell more than you really had and now you have to figure out how to get it. Like there’s so many problems that you run into. So all that stuff, your logistics needs to be like on point. So Greg is giving a real life example, a company that didn’t make it because they didn’t pay attention to. I love that example. Yeah. And we were doing, we were doing that. They went out of business. But I love that you’re being honest and talking about it and giving a real life example. What were you doing in revenue? Yeah, we’re, I don’t know the exact numbers, but I know it was well over eight figures, so I mean just because you’re making sales, if your, if your processes are terrible and your and your profit margins are crap, you know, who cares if you’re making, you know, 10,000,000 a year in sales, doesn’t matter, you know, that’s one of the things I like. We did not expand it to walmart marketplace because the customer service issues that are still there, they’re not fixed yet and then they have some other problems yet because they’re still growing and I get all that, but why had that responsibility today? And I think about those companies that have expanded into that marketplace and now we’re dealing
Stephen: [32:40] with these other changes cause they got everything right and ready and then all of a sudden Amazon comes along and makes a significant change that now they’re scrambling to go figure out. My theory is this, if you’re not making money in some of those other marketplaces, there is time and effort as great points out, you’re tying up inventory in these things. If it’s not profitable and if you’re honest, and if you go back and look at it, it might not be right. You might have to pull back from them and say, you know what, the timing isn’t right today. That doesn’t mean you give up. But then again, you know, you can always go back to it. And so to me, I think all these moving pieces are very difficult to manage and it absolutely comes down to software. I mean, I agree with you. I don’t think, and in today’s marketplace, finding and retaining good people, you know, and keeping them right long-term, it’s a real challenge. And so if you could find a way to do it with software, regardless of the expense, I’m like a channel. You mentioned channel, if they’re really expensive,
Speaker 3: [33:35] it seemed like, and again, I didn’t examine the marketplace and I don’t know all the other, other solutions out there, but we were, we were using some kind of like a dinosaur of a software. Um, and so it almost seemed like a, it was like this, it was a enterprise level kind of solution, but kind of archaic. And then channel advisor was like, the cost of it was like exponentially more so it wasn’t an incremental adjustment in price. It was like, OK, now we’re paying, you know, whatever, a couple thousand and then channel buyers is like boom, five figures or something a month. It’s like, Whoa, Whoa, whoa. This is. And that’s the feeling, especially
Stephen: [34:18] in the description you’re talking about where you built, built all this personal infrastructure where they built up all this staff and all these teams and all this stuff. You don’t have the benefit to do both. It’s what do they call that? A Hobson’s choice. The right arm or left arm, right? Or you basically. Then you’re listing off all your staff, all the team and all that institutional knowledge to put a piece of software in there. And so figuring this out, I think, I think we’re all at this pivotal point in our business to start thinking about, hey, are we building a real business out here? If so, we need to start looking at inventory management. If you deal with inventory management and as Greg would suggest, you do it electronically rather than more. Steve’s in the warehouse, right. That’s smart. And I think that makes perfect sense. More or less spreadsheets, right?
Speaker 3: [35:05] Hey. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Just a little more lean operation. Like we had our own warehouse too, but um, and I don’t know the specifics but I know that that is overhead and so we’ve got all this inventory just sitting in there waiting to be sold so, you know, if it’s not sold or selling, like it’s just tied up money, you know, and um, we probably should’ve done more third party kind of warehousing and stuff as well just to kind of keep it lean and focused more on the software so we can have a smaller team with like awesome software and just kind of, you know, login to accounts and whatever, have everything click ship and whatever. Make it make it simple because if it was just, it was too much for um, like one person or two persons, like there was. And there was only like one, one or two people managing all those marketplaces that mentioned so responsibility. And so every, every time a new marketplace would pop up, sadly, instead of hiring a new person because like we were just loaded on that same person, which is like, it’s not efficient.
Stephen: [36:14] You also lose the ability to adapt and change as the market places change. Right? So, so, you know, we’re a decent position because Amazon’s changing their inventory system or their, their management. So they want to be a fulfillment company. They don’t want to be a warehouse company. OK, great. So we can drip it as and likes to use that phrase from our warehouse. We can drip it in over time. Maybe, uh, I think Lee, Ron mentioned 35 days, the optimal number for him. And so you’ll look at that and then you can manage that. Now on the back end, you do have to deal with what do you do with it? You know, you have all that money tied up sitting there, you know, and so maybe you’re not getting full containers, maybe you’re going to start dealing with that because it might be a higher cost, but it’s still less of a higher cost than the other option. Right, and these are the kinds of things that you want to think about in software will allow you to do that. So I know where we’re going full circle, but I think. Well, I think
Speaker 3: [37:04] it was like this is very, very, very relevant to my life. It’s all right. This is stuff. If that’s
Stephen: [37:09] happening in these last couple of weeks on all these marketplaces at the other big one, Ebay, ebay’s making everybody except returns and getting rid of restocking fees and stuff like that and people are like, Whoa, wait, that means I’m going to sell somebody who’s going to rent my shoes. Right? I saw a lot of shoes, so nobody’s going to be renting steve shoes, meaning they can take them and bring them home and put them on 30 days later, sent it back saying I don’t like them, but meantime you can see they went to a party and you could see the gum on the bottom. That’s a bad business. Yeah. Effect. Right? So what do you do? You can curl up and suck your thumb in the quarter or you could raise your prices and build that into it. Knowing that there’s going to be a percentage and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Stephen: [37:49] And so I think that the key, that’s why hence the reason head Greg on was we’re talking about change, we’re talking about a lot of change and again, what Greg offers and I’m going to let them pitch his stuff. And again Steve does not benefit is greg saying, hey, you know, figure out your own marketplace or figure out your own methods. So one of the methods that I’ve seen out there is, you know, create a landing page dedicated to my item on Amazon. So it’s my water bottle that I’m looking at on Amazon with my link. I own a hundred percent of that pages by box. When you click on that link, it goes to Steve’s web page on Amazon at Steve’s water bottle. And that’s what you’re seeing. You’re not seeing all the competitors that sell the exact same water bottle, right? But getting people to that landing page, greg is really the art. Yeah, I know you say it’s really only two things. So let’s talk about that. So how do we get people to come to that landing page? My example, my silly example there, how do I get people there? What, what are the real common techniques now that I can do to help get my product found out there?
Speaker 3: [38:59] Um, with, with your, um, marketplace listings you don’t have a ton to work with, so you’ll probably other than like the description, so there’s not a lot of content that you can control, control Amazon, [inaudible]. Um, so you just, um, got the title to work with you, get the description. So just make sure that you’re writing a thorough description. Uh, but again, I’m not the expert at ranking is what I’m going to say is what I was asking was I wanna bring them off. I’m to create my own landing page. Steve landing page. It’s going to be Steve’s water bottles.com. And on there is my link to, if somebody clicks by here, it goes to Amazon and uses their link to buy a water bottle. But I want to get people to cities, water bottle.com where they can see my water bottle. What can I do that I don’t think I was clear?
Speaker 3: [39:48] I apologize for that. That’s what I’m looking for. How do I get people to see that? Yeah, it’s pretty simple and again, it just kind of goes back to the content and the backlinks. So, um, the content is very important. So the way that I attack seo kind of is, and this is kind of very useful for beginners and stuff or people, they’re just trying to get that initial traction because when I first started with Internet marketing make money online, I always was just blown away and kind of couldn’t wrap my head around like how do you know these people that say they went from like zero or like $50,000 into debt and to like whatever, $10,000 recurring a month, there’s something missing in what, what did they do, how do they get that initial traction, you know, without having a ton of money to work with or credit or something.
Speaker 3: [40:40] And my big epiphany with that was focusing on the long tail keywords. So back several years ago it was a little bit more like I knew that back then I just, it was more challenging to find them, but luckily there’s some free tools out there that will give you these long lists of keyword suggestions that people are typing in. So one example is there’s a free tool called keyword tool.io. That’s pretty easy to remember, but if you just type in, I start with a root keyword. So uh, like his running shoes, I would just type that in and kind of see where it leads me. It’s going to give me several hundred long, long tail suggestions that may even give you, since that is like super vague. It might give you, um, even like it’ll, it’ll be longer tail keywords, but they’ll still not be kind of vague.
Speaker 3: [41:31] But from that list you might get ideas and suggestions and then plug in one of those to the same tool and they will give you even more like refined. I’m longer tail keywords and these are, these are pulling, that tool pulls from the, like the related searches and from search engines like Google and Amazon. And being and stuff, so these are search engine or search terms that people are actually typing in because back several years ago, while I knew this strategy, it was like you just almost had to pick them yourself or make them up and you don’t want to go down that route because you want to target and if you’re going to spend any effort at all, you want them to be a keywords that people are actually typing in so that, that strategy or that method will give you the list of keywords. Because, you know, the whole process of my strategy is like, I don’t want to have to think too hard, you know, I’m not that smart.
Speaker 3: [42:26] I don’t feel like I am so, uh, are not like the Albert Einstein genius or anything. So all of this stuff is like, if you can just give it like a seed keyword to start with, um, that term. I’ve never heard that term. Seed Keyword. Love that visualization. If you can just, if you just know the, you know, the start with the niche that you’re in, the product that you’re in, you know, the, the most generic keyword related to that product, and then just kind of go down that rabbit hole and you’re going to get ideas. The more suggestions that it gets you into the, there’s a massive amount of keywords that people are typing in all day, you know, they’re not just typing in, um, generic keywords like make money online. They’re, you know, when your intro really interested in a niche or product, you’re typing and really specific stuff and you’re hoping to make money selling shoes on Amazon, right?
Speaker 3: [43:17] Or something that’s much bigger than that, right? Specific. Absolutely. And you ideally want to find something that is going to address that specific key words. So, um, that’s kind of a long-winded explanation, but you take that strategy and then you create a pieces of content around those long tail pieces of, uh, of keywords. So you can either do that through youtube videos. Uh, it works the same way. You can do that with um, websites and you can even, um, this is a kind of a better strategy, but it obviously takes a little bit more effort but go through that list of long tail keywords and kind of arrange them in a way that kind of would make sense to talk about maybe 10 or 12 of those and then I, and then write basically a longer article addressing 10 or 20 of those and easy way to do that is just to write a sentence or two about each of those long tail keywords kind of addressing it.
Speaker 3: [44:15] And then you can kind of arrange it in a flow that makes sense logically later. And uh, that’s pretty much the, the secret. You just create multiple pieces of content like that and it’s going to be slow in the beginning. Probably a depending, you know, it could be fast or slow depending on, you know, how competitive your niches or what key words you choose or whatever. Um, but eventually you’re going to be that, you know, special widget keyword guys like Dang, like 90 percent of the long tail keywords around this. Like this guy has so much content about this one thing
Stephen: [44:52] dominant in there, so when people have been so buy my water bottles, these water bottle by having stories out there and caught on that website related to water and water bottles and whatever other magic words that come through by having pages of content in there that are relevant and relatable. Eventually I scale the content skill and I’m the dominant force. And that scenario by maybe it’s 30 stories, maybe it’s 40, maybe 50. Eventually you just keep creeping your way up over time.
Speaker 3: [45:24] Yeah. And eventually you’re going to get to the point where you basically become like the Amazon of that niche and they’re like, man, you’re so big now. Your body building.com or something where they have so much content in that niche. Like you can’t start tomorrow and like really compete with them. Like they’re, they’re so far ahead of you. They’re years ahead of you, you know, because they’ve been creating content for years. So
Stephen: [45:48] yeah, you can still do it though. So I mean that’s really the point by, by you know, and so people are listening to this sounds overwhelming. I’ve got so many products and my advice to you there is, do not do that. Gather all those products to go after your, you know, do the 80, 20 rule, figure out where it is and what brand you’re building. That’s where you take this effort. To me, this is again, a good opportunity to changes are coming. As Greg said, it’s anyone is guarantee, but the changes are going to come faster. They’re just going to keep coming faster and faster. So take this opportunity. We all know we should do it. We know we should’ve done it a year ago or two years ago. The best time to start is today, right? Today. Given the situation you’re in, the best time to start is today. It isn’t last week because you didn’t, can’t Redo it. So by taking this time, taking this effort, building this, how have you have you any frame of reference for how long it does take? I mean, I guess it’s so dependent, you know, if you’re, you know, when you’re trying to compete against a body building or a Nike or whatever, you know, that that’s, that’s monumental
Speaker 3: [46:52] is I’ll give this timeline. So I would say just be disciplined, consistent at producing content and usually within like probably about 60 to 90 days, you should start to see some traction. I’m not saying that you’re going to get gobs and gobs of traffic by them, but you should start to see some initial traffic and there’s, if you keep producing content consistently, it doesn’t have to be, you know, 40 articles a day or anything like that, but just like consistently about the same stuff and eventually you’re going to hit this I’m stride where it’s your website and that it’s going to kind of pick up some steam and it’s just, you’re going to naturally, because you’re have content that is um, more s, you know, a lot of traffic from lots of long tail keywords. Naturally over time you’re going to start to rank for the more competitive stuff. Light, light, generic stuff like best water bottle or something like, man, that’s crazy.
Stephen: [47:51] Which would be unbelievable. Could you imagine ranking for that? But because I put out all this content and it’s related or you know, some way, uh, it’s related to that seed keyword, right? That best water bottle. I’m now becoming the authority over time and it just gets stronger with authority each time. That makes perfect sense to me. I mean, it, it actually makes perfect sense, right? When, when you do something over and over, you get better. And a dude, I like it. I like the thinking. Well, because this is a real issue like, like we’ve talked about earlier, this is the time right now. It is, it is significant. So you know, you, you have a course, I’m going to let you pitch it again. I do not benefit in any way, um, but I do appreciate the information from you. So it is a quid pro quo.
Stephen: [48:37] I’m going to let you pitch your stuff because there are some people listening saying, Hey, I want to scale this out. This isn’t the only technique. There are lots of other techniques, there are some white hat techniques, there’s some gray hat and there is some black hat and I’m not going there, but there are some things that you’re not taking advantage of the marketplace. You’re just, it’s, uh, you know, we’re on, a lot of us are in this arbitrage business. What are you doing? You’re taking advantage of the marketplace, right? You’re, you’re, you’re seeing in a deficiency in the marketplace and you’re buying it at that opportunity. There are some opportunities within the Seo world that you can take advantage of and I’m not going to talk about, but greg does offer some of that stuff and he has some guidance on that kind of thing. And so, you know, you have a course and it’s really about taking and driving a seo for either your own e-commerce business. We’re creating a passive income stream by, you know, building out and we’re using affiliate marketing or courses and stuff like that. So go ahead and give me your 60 second elevator pitch on what it is and why they should be interested in it.
Speaker 3: [49:40] Yeah, so my course is called seo affiliate domination of people want to check it out. You can just go to Seo, affiliate domination, and basically I created this as a really simple, scalable, sustainable strategy that you can. This is perfect for the beginner, but you know, and it’s worked for. It doesn’t take a lot of money, doesn’t take a lot of, um, a, a huge amount of a timer investment and it can be applied for any neck. So that’s why I love it. It’s a evergreen strategy and it’s, it’s something you know, your audiences e-comm related, so this can help you rank your stores without having to or your own websites without having to fight over the buy box with Amazon and some of these other platforms. And then if you ever want to do anything else, like if you’re in like Biz around a lens or your own, you want to build your own branded authority and kind of rank for your own name so that you can kind of blanket the first page for your name and command that space.
Speaker 3: [50:37] Or You want to do affiliate marketing. It can be applied to multiple different niches and this is like, there’s so many long tail keywords out there and all these different niches that this is something that, you know, it’s, it’s evergreen, it’s sustainable, it’s something that’s not going to go away tomorrow. So I know a lot of courses and ways to make money out there. There’s kind of like this undertone of Ma, you know, is this a trend, when is it gonna, you know, am I too late to the trends and stuff, like when is this going to go away and stuff. So Seo has been around for since the beginning of the Internet and it really honestly hasn’t changed since then. So this is, yeah, I love it because it’s, I’m not trying to compete with Steve or whatever and even if I can’t compete with Steve with on the marketplace and I can, I can, you know, do it with Seo and, and, and still be fine because, you know, there’s a, my price may never be the lowest, but I at least I can still make a comfortable living with e-commerce. Profitable. Yeah. It’s kind of important. So that’s kind of the Spiel, so I mean, it has a lot of applications, but the core strategy is very simple, but for your audience, it’s um, definitely something that can help those, um, those marketplace listings rank higher as well as ranking your own properties so that you cannot, you know, be making money there as well from your own store. So
Stephen: [51:56] it’s clearly a skill set that’s transferable. I mean, that’s what I always look for. I’m always looking for skill sets that are transferable across multiple, um, you know, businesses and lines. And today this is the marketplace that we’re in, but tomorrow who knows what it’s going to be. So having these skills I think is a good thing. So I’m putting the links out there. It’s SEO, affiliate domination. Again, I do not benefit in any way. It’s not an affiliate course for me or anything like that. It’s just a guy who that he sells his own stuff and you’re hurting. He said he knows what he’s talking about. And if this is interesting to you, man, I hope you go over and a push link. Again, I’ll put the link here or just go to Seo, affiliate dominate, Seo, affiliate domination dot. I’m greg. If somebody has some follow-up questions for you, what’s the best way to get in touch with?
Speaker 3: [52:42] Um, they can, uh, there’ll be contact, contact information on the site. They can reach out.
Stephen: [52:46] Same spot. OK, right. I’ll put that there. I really appreciate it. I think you’ve really, really expanded on some things that I thought I knew you’d definitely clarified some things and I, and I again, it’s the world’s going to change. It continues to change and you’ve, you’ve been part of an example that didn’t adapt or didn’t pay attention. And right now we need to pay more attention. And so I think this stuff is more relevant today. It’ll only be more relevant tomorrow because your competitor is paying attention to this stuff. So you have to. So did I, I really appreciate it. I wish you nothing but success. Thank you so much. Thank you. Have a great episode. Know after call we got talking about, you know it. It’s fortunate that in his world that he had some ecommerce experience so he could try and make it relevant to us.
Stephen: [53:33] And I think, I think there’s another lesson there. Um, I think it was a, I forget who it was, Dan Miller or somebody told me that the most they learned in their business, I don’t remember who it was, maybe it’s Kelly loach the most they learned in their business was by going to a non-related ecommerce, a ecommerce event and it like expanded their mind because they didn’t even realize that this whole other world is operating simultan right alongside of our e-commerce business and they haven’t touched yet and yet he has. So that’s what made it kind of cool that he was able to connect the two. But there are lots of these worlds out there that have an operating alongside of us. And if you could take the best of them and start to take advantage of it. I think it’s genius. And, uh, I think, I think he did a great job and I think it’s very real.
Stephen: [54:19] And I’m going to be taking this course because I’m excited about it. I want to find ways to help drive traffic. I want to learn this skill set because I want to transfer it many different times to other things that I’m doing. So e-commerce, momentum, com, E-com, swimming, [inaudible]. Don’t forget my sponsors, they do pay me. This guy doesn’t, but they do pay me. So it always helps if you find one of their services useful. I know a bunch of people signed up for Karen Locker Service this week. I really appreciate it. Um, I’m right in there with you because I pay her too and I’m, I’m very, very pleased with what she’s done for, um, for me. And I think she can do for you. So if you’re interested in that, check out the website, check out this episode. I have a link in there. Um, solutions for e-commerce dot com. Forward slash momentum. Uh, there’s, there’s more to it. I have the link out there and it’ll take you right in there and you’ll save $50 a month. That’s not the reason. Don’t worry about the 50 bucks you save. That’s the little icing on the cake. What you want somebody helping you run your business, and that’s what Karen does for me. E-Commerce [inaudible]. Take care.
Speaker 2: [55:19] Thanks for listening to the e-commerce momentum podcast. All the links mentioned today can be found that e-commerce momentum dot episode number. Please remember to subscribe and like us on itunes. OK.
