#495 - Getting Started on Amazon FBA with Limited Funds

Get ready to unlock the secrets of Amazon-selling success as we welcome back, Stephen Diaz of the Rainmaker Family. Together with his wife, they have woven a thriving community of dedicated e-commerce sellers. Today's deep-dive episode is crammed with innovative strategies, specially designed for those venturing into Amazon's realm for the first time. Prepare to learn how to rake in thousands of dollars per month by creating videos for other people's products, and finding good products to promote with the help of tools such as the Helium 10 Chrome extension Demand Analyzer. We also walk you through the Amazon influencer program and how you can be a part of it without having to be the 'face' of video content.

Buckle up as we guide you through the entire process of recording, uploading, and creating eye-catching thumbnails for your videos. Be ready to learn how to craft compelling titles and get a handful of tips to produce successful video reviews. We also brainstorm creative ideas for video reviews that go beyond the confines of your home. Stephen sheds light on his experiences and the advantages of participating in high-ticket mastermind events, highlighting how investing in yourself can dramatically influence your success in the e-commerce world.

In our journey through this episode, Stephen imparts priceless insights into the keys to entrepreneurial success. We touch on the importance of focus, mindset, and budgeting in e-commerce. In the end, we delve into the strategies that work best for family-oriented businesses on Amazon, like how to utilize Amazon Associates and affiliate links to connect to other products in your shop. Whether you're a novice or a seasoned seller, this episode promises you strategies and insights to skyrocket your business to new heights. Tune in, and get ready to get some creative ideas on how you can build capital for Amazon FBA selling.

In episode 495 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Stephen discuss:

• 01:57 - The Maldives Honeymoon Strategy Helped The Rainmaker Community
• 03:51 - How To Build Capital For An Amazon FBA Business
• 07:14 - Making 6-Figures As An Amazon Affiliate
• 08:43 - Difference Between Amazon Associates And Affiliates
• 11:17  - Different Kinds Of Videos You Can Make
• 17:15 - Why Joining Masterminds Are Important
• 21:18 - Inspiring Stories From Stephen’s Community
• 31:18 - What Does It Take To Succeed In This Business?
• 36:49 - How To Get More Information Of Stephen’s Community
• 40:20 - Stephen’s 60-Second Tip

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Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today we've got somebody back on the show who's got one of the most successful communities out there in the Amazon world and he's going to talk about what's been working for them, including how some can make thousands of dollars a month on doing videos for other people's products. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Are you browsing a Shopify Walmart, Etsy, alibaba or Pintu? Are you browsing a Shopify Walmart, Etsy, Alibaba or Pinterest page and maybe you see a cool product that you want to get some more data on? Well, while you're on those pages, you can actually use the Helium 10 Chrome extension Demand Analyzer to get instant data about what's happening on Amazon for those keywords on these other websites. Or maybe you want to then follow up and get an actual supplier quote from a company on Alibaba.com in order to see if you can get this product produced. You can do that also with the Helium 10 Demand Analyzer. Both of these are part of the Helium 10 Chrome extension, which you can download for free at h10.me forward slash extension.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That's a completely BS free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world, and we're bringing back somebody who, along with his wife, has helped more serious sellers than almost anybody else out there. Stephen, how's it going, man? Welcome back.

 

Stephen:

What's up, Bradley man? Anytime I get to hang out with you is awesome. I know Chelsea's usually sitting right by my side, but today she's 100% mom. So she's being 100% mom, today I'm being 100% podcaster Love it. And that's how we do it.

 

Bradley Sutton:

And in your honor, you know, I'm actually wearing the shirt that you guys gave me the Maldives shirt. I believe this came from Merch by Amazon, like what? Two, three years ago. I think, you guys, it might have been either during the pandemic or before the pandemic. That's how long.

 

Stephen:

I've had this shirt. Well, the Maldives strategy impacted our community so much that I was like we got to give back and I didn't know Bradley's T-shirt size, so I think I sent you like six Amazon merch shirts.

 

Bradley Sutton:

It was great. I gave one to each of my family who were all those sizes, and then I took the biggest one for myself.

 

Stephen:

Perfect man, that's good. Well, that's that that technique is still making ripples, man Like it's. It's very cool. And title density, all that stuff we love it in Rainmaker. So yeah, I'm excited.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Speaking of which, it is now two 10pm on Wednesday, in 28 hours I'm hopping on the plane to go to Maldives. To record episode 500. So the latest iteration of it.

 

Stephen:

There we go. Dang man, I need to get out to the Maldives now. Like I was every time they're out there. Yeah, they got a great kids club, you know so so you know, do you go to the same place every time?

 

Bradley Sutton:

I either go to the Waldorf Astoria or the Conrad. They're both Hillson properties, so I can use my points for it for either one, but I don't know if you're a Hilton or a Marriott person, but they got good Marriott properties out there too, okay, Anyways, let's get into some strategy. Let's just start. You know like we usually say this at the end, but we'll, we'll go and do some strategies at the end, but every time you've been on the show you've always, you know, come with some like kind of unique, uh, unique stuff. So like back in. By the way, guys, if you want to get their full backstory uh, I wrote down here or I didn't write down, I don't do much of work here. Mel, my assistant, is one who does the work here. He put in a episode of 198 guys. So episode all the way back in 198, we're about to film 500. That just shows you where, how far we've come. But 198 was their first time you can get their their backstory there. And then they came back in episode 318. So way back in episode 198, they were talking about uh doing sales on Facebook, uh market places, and then they gave some updates on that in episode uh 318 and talking about Facebook groups. And so I think the latest thing that you guys have been doing you know, especially for those who at the beginning might not be able to have enough money to to, to, to start private label, to invest, uh talk about what is one of the ways that people can can build some capital or what, what, what your community has been doing, yeah, I mean we see all different levels, you know, and and, and we really do specialize, you know, in the Rainmaker family, helping moms, and so a lot of moms like they are just like, uh, honestly, they've tried a lot of other stuff, you know, and so they're hesitant to go go big on Amazon at the first.

 

Stephen:

So so helping them create the money to do the thing is definitely something that's in our specialty. So I would say, lately, there's a handful of strategies. Right now we definitely have a subset of our community doing the influencer strategy on Amazon. Um, and when you hear that word, I think people think, like you know, I don't know, taking pictures of your coffee at the coffee shop and like having your face all over social media, um, but the Amazon influencer program, anyone can do and you can actually do it without putting your face in the videos, which is kind of nice. And so, honestly, like, uh, this opportunity was brought to me by a guy, john, he was doing it and he kind of came to our community. I was like, hey, I'll do this for you guys. Like he was just looking for more products to review. But if any of your listeners are unfamiliar with it, basically how it works is when you go to the Amazon listing right, you see the photos. There's always like these, like videos related to the item or sometimes there. If you have a video, it'll be like the second video that plays after your video, and those are like these Amazon influencer videos and if someone watches that video and then buys the product, that influencer will get a commission on the sale, which is really crazy. So, um, you know, you've probably heard of the Amazon associate program or affiliate program where I signed up for that.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Just, I was trying to let you just check if I can get some, um, you know, see some different data points. I was curious if, like Amazon, affiliates have different data points. So I signed up and I was just like I already shoot me or my family is going to get some of them. I might as well just make a link and and get some. You know, get some stuff. But yeah, I signed up for that one, but not the influencer. So what's the difference between the two?

 

Stephen:

So, yeah, you have to sign up as a Amazon associate or affiliate first, and then you can apply for the influencer program. So it is an application only, uh, to get into it. But, um, uh, it's fairly easy to get in. You just need to have an audience somewhere of some sort, and then you can use TikTok, instagram, facebook. I mean, we have people even just use a Facebook page and they'll they'll run ads to the page for a little bit to just gain some audience. Uh and then they'll apply right. And so the the Amazon influencer program. Once you're in, they basically allow you to like, upload videos of of products you're reviewing, but the catch is you don't have to have bought the product on Amazon, so, like it doesn't have to be your past purchases, it can be literally any product that's on Amazon.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So if they get approved for this, like, are they seeing something different on product pages or something that's like an extra button of of how they can upload or how they different?

 

Stephen:

just like seller central is its own thing, the influencer or the associate program has his own dashboard you can log into. Kind of KDP, like Amazon, keeps all these things separate, you think they just link them all. Yeah, um, it's like you log into your associates dashboard. You kind of click over to the influencer page and influencers. You may see people do this on Instagram where they actually have like a storefront where it's like my favorite Amazon things and it'll be like my house hacks my favorite clothes and those are like that's one way to do it. But this kind of video side of the Amazon influencer program is really the lucrative one. And the guy I heard it from, john, he was doing six figures with this. Like that was his full time business. He did have a YouTube channel. He was reviewing tech gear and things like that, but he would just like get reached out from brands at this point. He's kind of got a name for himself and I think he was doing like over 200,000 and just Amazon money.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Is it all on commission? Or also he'll get like a flat fee from some of the store owners to create videos.

 

Stephen:

Sometimes they are getting like a, like a bounty, like that, but a lot of it is just commission. Yeah, he's getting commissions through affiliates so he's doing super high volume. That's like I don't know a ton of people doing those types of numbers. Yeah, but that got us interested. You know, chelsea signed up for it and she was around the house shooting stuff. So basically, what you do is just go around your house and you just review every item in your house and like it doesn't have like again, you didn't have to buy it on Amazon, it just has to be on Amazon. Yeah, so you just be like you know, uh, hey, this, I have a Apple mouse on my desk. You're like, let me tell you about this Apple mouse and you just do a review of it. But the types of reviews that work really well are just authentic reviews. If you're super polished and like, let me tell you, it looks like too professional, people don't trust it, right. So you want to just like do it like a casual, like honestly, a lot of our reviews are cell phone, they're vertical and we're shooting away from us and just like pointing and like it's like voiceover, just like like you would like your unboxing something. Yeah, show your friend and so, yeah, you just go around your house and like review everything right and you have to submit the videos. They do have to get approved by Amazon, but once they're approved, they live on that page. You know of the Amazon listing and a percentage of people will click on them, watch them and you'll get commissions and sometimes they actually go up in the carousel too.

 

Bradley Sutton:

I think you know Norm Ferrari was showing you this.

 

Stephen:

Videos will go up in the carousel.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, yeah.

 

Stephen:

Huh, it's crazy. So and then if?

 

Bradley Sutton:

they click it in the carousel and buy it, they still get credit then. Yep, of course.

 

Stephen:

Yeah, you get a commission. Yeah, yeah, all right, I'm a how I do that.

 

Bradley Sutton:

I'm going to have to look into that. I always like it's fun, man, it's fun.

 

Stephen:

It's fun thinking about like, okay, what's the most expensive thing in my house, because again, you're making such a small percentage, right? Yeah, you either want super high volume or you want expensive and helium 10 super helpful because you can go. Okay, how much volume is this product doing? Right, so if you have, like I remember we were reviewing stash your bags. They're like those ziploc bag alternatives, like they're like made of silicone oh, reusable ziploc bags basically. But there's like a thousand stash your bag listings, right, because it's like a wholesale product that'll up your wholesale. So I use helium 10 to figure out which one has the most sales because, like you can't tell which blue stash your bag I bought it could be on any of these listings, right? Yeah, I use helium 10 to figure out which listing has the highest volume, right, but also has the least amount of influencers hopping on there and making videos. So that increases the chances and that that one video would make it's like 10 to $15 a day. You know it's not like crazy, but imagine you have a hundred videos, a thousand videos, you know, that are that are doing those types of numbers Like it's. It's incredible.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So, yeah, and so you record it with your phone and then what you? You upload it with the or you send it to your computer and then you upload it in that.

 

Stephen:

Yeah you can upload it. Yeah, I always send to my computer, upload it. You can do a thumbnail. So if you're, you know you know anything about internet, you know you gotta have a catchy thumbnail sometimes. But I was super lazy about it because Chelsea would reshoot them and I would upload them. So I'd do the catchy title and the thumbnail. Oh, that was my specialty. So the key thing with the titles, you don't really want to tell people if you like the product or not. You want to be like five things. I wish I knew before I bought this. Right, there's like no idea.

 

Bradley Sutton:

You have no idea if, like, do you have any that that you could like tell me you'll look at right now, and then I could like show people how it looks, or just an example of one.

 

Stephen:

I'll shout out a friend's brand, kingsloo. Yeah, he sells a slim fit wallet and we did a video on that one and yeah, it's just a super simple video.

 

Bradley Sutton:

$109 for a wallet.

 

Stephen:

Good grief, I know Gucci. Yeah, he sells mostly off Amazon. He's more of a DTC but we've helped him get on Amazon and oh five videos here. I bet a bunch of our Rainmakers have done it now, and then I think you click on that like five videos underneath there and you should see like Heather's on there and Chelsea's on there. Yeah, there you go.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Wait, well, that's, that's their video. Yeah.

 

Stephen:

So click on, here we go, honest, awesome.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So so when you said the, the, the thumbnail like this is the thumbnail that they chose. They just chose a random part of it. Oh, I did that. So like oh, you did this.

 

Stephen:

Honestly like I was super lazy. So I would just screenshot and make an arrow, like I put an arrow and like it kind of like makes you think I'm talking about some specific thing, but it's just a catchy way to kind of. And then you just make it vertical, just like this. Wait, here's I didn't know it wasn't.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Oh yeah, hear your voice in this thing. There, there we go. Okay, wow, I think. Yeah, this is one of those. I was one of the good ones.

 

Stephen:

Heather did this one.

 

Bradley Sutton:

She's in our community.

 

Stephen:

She's really helped us pioneer this kind of influencer thing. She created a mini course on it. Yeah, super casual, right, like it's not like really polished. Of course, if you're doing like a DSLR camera or like the new iPhone, people want like the Marcus Brown. You know they want the Polish video, right, but we're just all the stuff around your house you can just pick, hey, you know, you can just go and get a bunch of stuff, all the stuff around your house, you can just pick. Hey, this is my honest opinion on this thing.

 

Bradley Sutton:

And you just don't know what account could be multiple people Like. Could I have my kids do videos on my account and stuff too?

 

Stephen:

Yeah, I'm just not like the kids, so like if you're going to have a kid, you got to have you in it as well.

 

Bradley Sutton:

like a minor or they have to be 18. My kids are over 18.

 

Stephen:

So yeah okay, then they could do it. Yeah, I mean one of the best side hustles, I feel like for a college kid like so so easy to do. You just need a cell phone, you just need time Maybe. I mean, we would batch like four or five videos a day and Chelsea would do some, I would do some, and we named our account like like family. So it was kind of like both of us, um and man, you can stack. I mean we, we did. Well, our goal was like to do 30, 30 videos. You know, just to get it started, I would say if someone's listening to this, they want to do this. I would commit to doing like 30 or a hundred videos to really see the effect of it. And then you can chill out and kind of just let that passive income come in and then just grow it as you want. And uh, I mentioned this before the call. But eventually you will run out of stuff to review right In your house and that's a good problem to have. Yeah, then you can start going to friends houses. You can start. You know, I mean you could even book an Airbnb and review everything in that house. I mean I've even this is really funny, but like I even reviewed something at a park one time, like that's someone else had like a stroller Cause like strollers are expensive and so like I just took a video of a stroller from far away. If someone else is trying, I wasn't showing their kids or anything like that, but I was like zooming in on my phone and I did a voiceover over it later, just talking through some of the benefits and things I was just reading on the listing, you know. So again it can get really creative with it. Um, of course we're not trying to manipulate sales or anything like that. Uh, like not trying to say something, that's not true. But I always go to the listing and I look at the reviews. Use helium 10 and you can analyze all the reviews and figure out what are the big questions people have. What are making what's, what are they loving about the product, what are they wanting to buy or what is what's drawing them to buying this product, that type of thing, and you can hit some of those things. Um, you can even throw all that into chat GPT and be like hey, write me a 30 second video review script and just literally read it.

 

Bradley Sutton:

I'm going to. I'm going to try this, but but not not to throw water on the fire here. But this is something that later on, I predict Amazon is going to change, because, just knowing the way Amazon operates because, yeah, somebody's going to do a lawsuit or something, because theoretically, nobody's going to do a video, that's going to talk bad about it because that.

 

Stephen:

You know, like the whole purpose.

 

Bradley Sutton:

You know, if you're an Amazon influence, you're trying to make money. You know, unless Amazon puts something in there where if you do a negative video but that's still real that somehow you still get some kickbacks, somebody's, somebody somewhere is going to do some kind of lawsuit just because this is such a country.

 

Stephen:

I do in a million videos or something like that.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, but either way, guys, that's why you got to get on this now. Yeah, what they are doing, which is nice, now you can include two products in the video.

 

Stephen:

I wouldn't recommend it when your first game started, but you can do comparison videos, which I do like where you're like. Hey, are you thinking about buying this?

 

Bradley Sutton:

or this.

 

Stephen:

That's good. Let me tell you about the pros and cons.

 

Bradley Sutton:

And in the video. Does the video show up on both listing? It shows up on both, yeah.

 

Stephen:

You can tag two products in the video. But if you do it right at the beginning, amazon typically won't approve it and they are getting stricter on who gets approved into the program and you have to submit three videos when you first start and they approve or deny those and so if they deny them you can try again, like I think it's three times. If you deny it three times, then it's kind of like you got to try open up a new account or something.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Basically, yeah, Now, are you also? Is this the only thing you're doing under your influencers account? Or are you also maintaining, like a YouTube or Instagram where you're sending deals to? We actually are doing that.

 

Stephen:

You know, like we've had an Amazon Associated Account for I mean since probably 20, probably before I was even an Amazon seller. So we, you know I'm always recommending stuff, even when we are back when we were wedding photographers. People are always like what camera are you using? So we have an Associated Account. And then Chelsea has, she uses the influencer page for her Instagram. So she has like her favorite things on there. You know, here's the kids toys we love, and you know that type of thing. So you definitely like Amazon wants you to be legit, like they don't want you just like do it just for the influence of videos. So and that's a better long-term strategy to is like, have a YouTube channel, have a Instagram, make a tick tock that's like you know Favorite mom finds or something like that and just like, post your videos cross, post them when you're I mean you already recorded, I'm right, yeah, post them on Facebook, post them on tick tock as well, and that's gonna not only drive more traffic to Amazon but it's gonna make you look more legit, you know. So, yeah, you could really make this a business model again. Amazon could change things. Sure, it is a new wear program, but you could definitely ride this thing for the next year or two, I bet, and it makes some good cash from it.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Nice, all right, let's switch gears a little bit, come something completely different. Um sure, I noticed that sometimes you go to like these, you know, like masterminds for, like entrepreneurs, and, and you know you met like Saddam and and come off from a yeah, that's right, he went up there and stuff yeah and and I, I I haven't been to one, but but a lot of these you know, if I'm not mistaken, you know Some of them cost thousands, some of them tens of thousands of dollars to go to. And then so somebody you know, like me, on the outside Looking in might be like, you know, like hey, we all know about, hey, invest in yourself and this and that, but what is it about events that that has people coming out of these things and say you know what? It was worth $1000, like, like. Are you really getting that kind of value out of like these, these, these mastermind kind of events that you go to?

 

Stephen:

Yeah, I mean, I'll use that example. You know, amz, one step. I met those guys through mastermind and I mean for us, like I would say, you want to get in a mastermind of people? Like there's different masterminds for different reasons, right? So oftentimes that mastermind was going to was probably less for the Amazon business and more for the coaching business, right? Yeah, so we teach people how to do Amazon and so meeting people at those masterminds, like those guys, that was awesome, because I was like, hey, we got a big launch coming up like what do you want to throw in, you know? And so they threw in like an awesome bonus for our people that, like people can only get through our work, like for being in Our world, and if that helps.

 

Bradley Sutton:

I use them, by the way, too, for a lot of my photography, and oh man.

 

Stephen:

Yeah, so like if that helps a handful more people come in our program, like that, that so the networking itself.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Like like that you know they weren't the organizers of the event. But the people you meet can give you invaluable thing.

 

Stephen:

Okay, yeah yeah, like we met another guy who does like LLC creation and all like the legal entity stuff which, like our people need all the time, you know. So not one relationship basically paid for the match.

 

Bradley Sutton:

And that's a good point, because now it's like you know, it's not like you couldn't Google to find companies that do this kind of stuff, but but you know, you don't know if how legit they are, but you know somebody who is Gonna invest in themselves and pay a huge money to actually be at that place. It's almost like pre vetting them. Yeah, yeah, a little bit in itself.

 

Stephen:

I'm gonna do a lot of conferences, right, and like conferences you get a lot of gold out of, but it's like usually a lot of time frame, right, like are there three, four days, and then there might be like one or two. Like man, that nugget Added six figures, added a million dollars on the business, like that. One thing I found in these higher ticket masterminds like we're in, we're in a 50k mastermind or 60k mastermind, like it's just like it's so much more compressed because of who's in the room and like who's paying to be in the room, that like you're in the lunch line, you know, like to get your like potato salad and someone drops an idea on you. That's like, oh my god, that's like that was a million dollar idea, you know. So, and I think it's the connections of like everyone who's paying there like to be in the room. They have a lot of awesome connections to you know. So that network effect. I think like, yeah, like sometimes masterminds are more teaching and training and like you know, but, but the best ones I've been in are more relational and it's just like how can we build partnerships? How can we leverage each other's resources? How can we work together? How to serve our people at a higher level. So that's where I found the value. And just there's something about getting in person with people. You know you do it all the time, you know. It's just like it's different than zoom, right yeah.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah for sure, all right guys. So that's something you know. Regardless of what field you're in, you know there's always different masterminds that that can help you, you know, grow as a person, as a you know there's inspirational stuff and or or as a business, if you're entrepreneur, I mean even a helium tent as a mastermind. So so you know the helium 10 elite program. You know people can meet. You know can meet other high-level sellers. So if you think that some of you guys want to look into, look at h10.me forward slash elite. But on the other hand, I think there's a couple masterminds like non-amazon masterminds I was thinking of mainly for me might want to. You know, look into, maybe I can see if helium 10 can help me out with the With the bill because some of these are pretty expensive, but that's interesting. Always bet on yourself, always improve yourself and sometimes it takes takes money to do that. Going back to the your community now, any cool stories. You know, every year there's always cool stories coming out your community. I remember the one Person who I was doing some demo a couple years ago about it's right football product or something, and then I was just like making a joke, like man, if I this would probably be totally something that I would, I would sell and then she ended up selling it made you know thousands of dollars on it. But any other cool like rags to riches stories or just just something inspiring that you could share with audience man it's.

 

Stephen:

I love our community because we've really like Encourages, community of celebration. I think like it's really easy and like even the Amazon space or really any entrepreneur space, to get in a Competitive mode where it's like, oh, other people winning means like I'm not right and kind of like you think about yourself and you. You either try to like one up somebody you know or you try to like kind of Downgrade their success or like I don't know makes it. People can like oftentimes in the early days of their entrepreneurship journey, go to kind of like almost like I'm not enough, thinking Like I was, like oh, like dang, like it's like you can get in just lack mindset. So we've really tried to overcome that because really when we're helping people in our program, we're helping bring them out of poverty mindset right Into abundant thinking, and not just financially but in all the areas. So when they do have the money, when they are making the money, they don't just let those old mindsets hold them back still, you know. And so we found the way you celebrate other people really shows a lot about that mindset you developed. And so we just like kind of our community is just a thing, like when someone is winning big or small, they post it in the group and like everyone just goes crazy over it. You know, and it's just a really cool like contagious momentum and we had one the other day that I just I loved because she said, like she was posting, I think she had done like her first like $3,000 day on Amazon. She had, you know, was doing about $10,000 weeks at that point in her business. But she said, like you know, when she started the program she was in product research for like so long. You know, like you kind of get stuck in that analysis, paralysis, and she was just getting discouraged and she said she'd always come to the group and just look at the wins every night and she would just like when she was feeling discouraged she'd go look at everyone else's wins and she just be like this is gonna be me, this is gonna be me, this is gonna be me. So it's so cool to see her, like it was probably a year after she started posting the screenshot and being like now I get to be the person you know that like encourages you and like if you're in the dumps, right now and you're feeling discouraged, like here.

 

Bradley Sutton:

It is, you know, and like, which I think is the reason why, yeah, you should be part of a community. You know, sometimes like if that person was trying on their own, I would say odds are they might have just given up because they weren't getting that inspiration. You know from other people. You know nine out of 10 times that person who's stuck in the analysis paralysis they just go ahead and give up. You know perhaps, but being part of a community you could see, you know other people succeed and it inspires you to move on. So I think that's important.

 

Stephen:

Yeah, it's incredible man and I. That's what gets me fired up. I mean, yes, it's cool when we have a student make $40,000 in a day on it. Like we've had these crazy like people like crush huge numbers. Again, it's not the normal, sure. But what gets me more excited is the people that, like you know, we got flowers in the mail from someone who said, like I was depressed, I was suicidal, like I was, I had no hope in life, and then I found this, you know, and this community, plus the training, plus the mindset, like it gave me hope again. Like that, yeah, that's like beyond the money. So we kind of sometimes joke, we're kind of like you know, amazon's kind of the front, you know it's like, yes, we're teaching Amazon, but like entrepreneurship in general, I think is one of the biggest transformational, like vehicles that you can ever like go on. It's like it's like a roller coaster ride that like changes your life right, yeah, and I love it for that. That it's like who it makes you in the process. It's so powerful. So we love celebrating those. We call those the bubble over benefits. Like it's cool when people hit the numbers and make the money, but the bubble over benefits of like I retired my husband or you know, I was able to quit this job. That was soul sucking. Or I got hope again Like that is so crazy, so Right.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now you know we can talk Amazon strategy all day long and stuff. But you know somebody like you who's dealt with so many sellers. You know and you help people, not just on the Amazon strategy but like you know mindset and you already handle a lot of that with a community and helping people. When we talked about the benefits of community, but what? are some other things that you see is is like the difference between those who succeed, and again, success doesn't mean a certain revenue figure. You know success is very subjective, but from those who succeed to those who you know end up, you know failing and giving up, because all the people in your community. They're given the same resources. You know they all have helium 10, you know they all, they all have you guys, they all have the same. You know training and stuff, but you know not. The fact of the matter is no program or no, anybody has a hundred percent success rate. So what are some of the things that that success or that not success? What are some of the things that differentiate the successes from the failures?

 

Stephen:

Totally. Yeah, we try to reverse engineer this because we basically have this thing called the 10K payday guarantee, and so to claim the 10K payday guarantee, which basically the short statement is, if you don't make $10,000, we'll pay you $10,000. But there's a ton of terms and conditions. So it's an action-based guarantee and we basically took our most successful students and we reverse engineer what they did and we put it in the guarantee. So, if you want to qualify for the guarantee, do this, this, this, this, and it's just like a checklist of all the stuff you got to do. And so I'd say the biggest thing is focus. Focus is a big one, especially for mom, especially for parents. Like you only have so many, so much time, right, and so we call this nutrients. Like you only have so much nutrients to put into your garden. If you're trying to do Amazon, you're also trying to day trade. You're also trying to, like, do this other Airbnb side, hustle over here. You're putting in just a tiny bit of nutrients. You're gonna grow like a lot of tiny pumpkins, right. But if you cut off a lot of pumpkins and you put all the nutrients into one, you're gonna grow like the award-winning pumpkin, right? There's a book called, I think, the Pumpkin, the Pumpkin I don't know something about pumpkins, where that came from and it's written by the guy who wrote profit first. But he talks about just like you just focus, right, and so that's a big one. We see, just I mean, they're like you know, bradley, like there's a thousand ways to make money on the internet, right, and so we really train people on like put blinders on for like nine months, like a year, like just give this thing your all for that amount of time. And whatever Facebook ad you see, don't click it. You know, just like do this thing. So I think that's a big one. We see people try to do too much and then they just go slower because of that or they get derailed into something else. The second thing I'd see we see a lot is really and we had a PhD neuropsychologist come into our group and really start training on this because she was talking about she works with like six and seven figure entrepreneurs on mindset and just the science behind like training your mind to go beyond where you're comfortable. And you know our body I'm gonna like not say this as sciencey as she would, but like you know, our body is like running a thousand automations at once, like I'm moving my hands, I'm breathing, I'm talking, I'm looking at you, I'm blinking. Like our body is designed, our brain is designed to automate those things because, like, if we had to think about all that, it would like destroy us, right? And so anytime you're doing something, really frequently your brain goes into really an automation and it's to keep you, come to us, keep you safe, just keep you. You know all these things. So when we stretch people into entrepreneurship or like hey, go spend $5,000 on inventory, right, like it's something that is like way beyond their current thinking sometimes. And so the brain will go whoa, chill, stop, slow down. Like hold on, I'm stuck. Like I'm stuck, I'm overwhelmed. These are actually, like we reframe them, as green flags that you're actually on the right track, cause we see people posting the group. I'm overwhelmed, I'm stuck. Right, we're like, oh, this is awesome. This means that we're stretching you this way, right, cause your brain is trying to keep you here, but that same thinking will keep you there. If you want to go here and have this amazing business, you gotta stretch and take this step here, you know. So we've kind of helped reframe the mindset thing. So when people are getting stuck. They know that it's a green flag and then they also know to reach out, cause we have a lot of different ways to support people. So that's the thing we see is people get stuck and then they don't reach out. They ghost us, you know, like we can't show up at their house and do that type of thing, yeah, and then I would say, so I said, focus getting stuck and not reaching out. And then I would say, like I would say PBC definitely has gotten way harder in this last season. And so I think, not having not going after, like I would say, either going after two low search volume products because they are on a kind of tight budget so they're going to have to really low search volume products, or going for, like way too high search volume products and not anticipating how much budget it takes to really rank and maintain rank on those search terms, you know. So it's like finding that middle ground, and so we've started to more train on that like kind of even budget training, of like hey, if you have this much devoted for your business, like spend this much on inventory, right, and leave this much for buffer room and leave this much for something you don't even know about yet, you know, because what we find is sometimes people stretch their budget on the first product so far, like you got 10,000, they spend all of it on inventory and then they have no buffer room to like keep it going, and then they got it, and then, if it is going, they got a reorder and then they're stuck right. So, training on that buffer. So just for people listening, if you're like I'm doing Amazon, I got this type of budget going in. I think, padding that budget right After you're not going all in on your inventory, you have budget room. I mean, you did this with that project. You launched a ton of products for like was it $5,000?

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, so I don't know. 12 products for 5,000 project 5K. Do you have any?

 

Stephen:

budgeting rules. I'm just curious, selfishly, because we've been kind of developing it, but like even for that, did you have any budgeting rules, like how much of that budget you'd spend on one product?

 

Bradley Sutton:

No, like I just wanted to see how many. My budget was 5K total, like including, you know, launching and stuff. I was like, all right, what in the world can I do with? This was my challenge. And then I was like all right, a lot of them were like straws and then I launched a brand around that like stuff that had to even do with like straws and parties and stuff.

 

Stephen:

Is there just low cost to?

 

Bradley Sutton:

make. Was that what it was? Yeah, just low cost to make. It kind of sucks that now that there's no Amazon, small and light. So actually I started losing some money on those products in the last few weeks that Amazon took away that program, but I mean, my goodness, like I discontinued some of them. They weren't all home runs, you can't be 12 out of 12. But still, like there are some products. I think I started that thing like four, three, four, five years, no, four years ago, and I'm still selling, you know, some. Like you know, I'm even bringing back one I'm going to do a little case study on it that it was really popular around Christmas time and I haven't sold it in, like you know, two years and so it's been dead. And I just ordered, you know, some new ones to see if I can get some traction. But yeah, the budget is. It was definitely critical. But you know, I tell people like, just because, like you can do it, this is not advisable because you know nobody can make a living off of products that are retailing for like $7, $8, which is what you have to do when you're trying to get products that your cost is less than a dollar, which it was for unit, yeah, so, yeah, yeah.

 

Stephen:

So we're encouraging people, like we kind of we kind of ask them what their budget is and then we kind of encourage them to stretch it a little bit and whether you're leveraging financing or, honestly, like we've seen a handful of people do partnerships, where you just are getting an inventory investor and that sounds fancy, but I mean that means like a friend or a family member who has heard about Amazon but doesn't really want to do the work, and so we found a lot of people doing that and, honestly, I would, I would. One of the easiest things to do is go to go to someone who has an audience too, like, if you can go to someone like you know, you're listening to the show, you have that one friend who has like an Instagram following. Go to her and go hey, I'm learning about e-commerce, I'm launching this product. Would you ever have interest in launching a product for your audience, you know, and then like, develop it with them, and then, basically, you do all the work, you do all the sourcing and then you get a percentage of the sales you know and that that's a no risk way to get into it. Or someone else is fronting the money for the inventory. They already have the audience, not only the Amazon data of the traffic there, but they already are going to promote it and that audience loves them. Buy anything they shall, you know, talk about. So that's another way we've seen people do it, where they are basically making it rain for someone else and then they're making a percentage of that and that's making their own pot and now they have their own money. Actually, that that that wallet brand Kingsloo, one of our Rainmakers, went through our challenge and she got hired by that company, oh wow, and she built their Amazon brand. I mean, they were, they were doing about eight figures like 10 to 12 million on just Shopify with that product. You know, just Facebook had to Shopify and they weren't even on Amazon. But when we looked at the helium 10 data, it was like people searching their brand on Amazon right, yeah, you'll see the Facebook guy and come over, and so she built it out and like, built a I mean they did a million dollars on just like the Amazon channel. And then we recently worked with them because I'm a good good friends with Josh and we re-did his listing cause he was just ranked on his brand keywords, like you know, but he wasn't on slim wallet for men or any of these like big keywords, and so we reworked it. Maldives launched it again and it like basically I don't know exactly but it it almost doubled or tripled his Amazon sales Like he was doing. He was doing. I remember him saying me screenshots of like right after the launch and it was like he's doing. He was doing I think 8,000 or something like that a day and he went up to like 25,000, 30,000. And this was like Q4 last year. So I don't know what his numbers are now, but it's crazy Like there's so many Shopify owners should just like they're cranking on Shopify but they have no idea about Amazon or they have false beliefs about Amazon. That's a whole nother market. If you're trying to get into Amazon, be an Amazon account manager for people on Shopify. When you have those Shopify ads for, like those DTC products, go look on Amazon. If they're not on Amazon or they're on Amazon and their listing is terrible, like there's an opportunity there and it's hard to like work that type of deal sometimes, but if you can like, that's incredible.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, yeah. So your program, you know, before we get to the last couple of strategies you might have, I was just looking at your website. It says you've had over 12,000 moms go through the program there. So if somebody is interested in it, is that like a prerequisite? They need to be a stay at home or working mom or what kind of a requirements do they have?

 

Stephen:

You know you just need to be motherly. No, that can be anybody. When we started, like you know, this is definitely a strategy for Amazon too. Like you want to have a niche, you know you want to, like, really focus on one person. So we, when we looked at our top case studies with our training, it was moms, and so we really made the program for moms when we first started. And when we first started was a lot of stay at home moms. Now it's a lot of working moms, a lot of corporate moms and it's a lot of non moms as well. So really we're just family first and so we're not going to tell you to just hustle your life away or going to tell you like, hey, build this business, but do in a way that protects your family, protects your marriage and all those things. So if you have a family mindset, you can definitely check us out. Yeah, and how can they do that? I'd say go to the. Go to rainmakerfamily.com. Rainmakerfamilycom that's like our, our branded website. You can find our social media there. We have a challenge, seven day challenge. You can get to there. That's what I was talking about. Like we've had people go through that and even just that launch, launch products, and you'll see, you'll see Bradley in there on a bonus day.

 

Bradley Sutton:

If you make it like this is one of the few. Actually no, this is the only community that almost every other week I do a, I do a call with them because you know your community is one of the best out there and so I wanted to make sure that you know I give back because you guys are doing some great stuff and really great community. Like I was just set the Amazon. Accelerate in Seattle and met some Rainmakers that came up took some pictures so that was. that was cool too, so all right so yeah, rainmakerfamily.com. Guys, if you want to, you know, check out the program Now. What's a couple of you know could be Amazon, anything else, e-commerce or some strategies you can leave us with today.

 

Stephen:

Man, I feel like I'm trying to remember the ones I said last time, you know. So, like, I think the one we've been geeking out on again we're still testing this but really is, how can we increase the average cart value on Amazon? Right On Shopify? Like you can have upsells, downsells, cross-sells, like you, you know you can have that funnel, but on Amazon it's just harder to do that. And I feel like I saw Amazon testing this for a season, like they had like a way you could like, oh, add this other thing on there, but I haven't seen it recently. And so what we've been doing is using inserts, basically upsell because, like again, not everyone's going to take an upsell on that, but if you make it really attractive and in alignment with your product, a percentage of people will click through on that thing and a percentage of those people will buy. And so the best way to do this with Amazon, honestly, is like doing a high ticket upsell of some sort. So imagine you're selling, like I don't know, a dog whistle for training, right? Like having an insert that says, like you know, get our free guide on blah, blah, blah, and that free guide leads to a dog training course that's $297. So, like I love pairing information products with physical products because you've already kind of like, spent money to acquire that customer, so to say, right, you pay the PVC, you got them, you know you, you sold them a $15 whistle. If you could Not even make money there, but then a percentage of people buy the $297 course right on the back end, then it increases your margins like crazy and you can spend more than anyone else on that product because you don't need to make money on the product. Actually, you know money in the back end from a percentage of the people that come through. So the tricky part is figuring out, like what's really in alignment with that product, that's that solves problems that that person is buying the product for, right. So yeah, every product Usually solves some sort of problem, right? It's like I, my kid is biting the rail on the crib. We, I, so like he, buy the crib rail bumper, right, like that was one of our, am our Rainmaker products. So like, what other problems does that parent? Half right as it with a two-year-old? So you just start thinking like how could I serve that person at the highest level? How could I? How could I give more value than anyone else in this industry? Right, and yet you could do other physical products, but those take time and and the best thing I would honestly do is give them something for free that you're gonna get, sir, contact information, and then you can ask more question about it, and then you can develop something for them that serves them at a high level, or you can develop future products for them, you know. So I know a lot of people take people from an insert to like a free download or something like that. But I'm kind of thinking through, like, how can we take them to Something that is actually an offer? Right, it's like it may be a free thing at first, it has to be catch it, don't? You can't just say, like, buy my thousand dollar course yeah, no, I mean her and have people click it. Like it has to be like something that truly is like oh wow, I'm gonna scan this QR code or click this link or whatever. And so, yeah, we, we another thing, our Rainmakers doing just like if you know, we're talking about Amazon Associates, as they will link to their other Products in their shop using affiliate links on the insert. So like, and they will even do this for other people's products in our community. So this is really cool. Like, oh, Rainmakers, if, like, they have a baby product, they'll go post in our group who else has baby products? And they'll find like three or four other products and they'll say basically, like, check out, check out our you know, check out our friends, and it's like three other products, but they're using affiliate links. So even if you're just making a couple dollars on that, it's increasing. I mean, you might spend a couple dollars to get the customer on PPC. So it's just this idea of like how could we steward those sales more? Um, Alex Hermosi said like if you could get one more sale ever and it had to lead to like every other sale in your business, like how would you change the customer experience you know, and like what, what does that delivery look like? Right, if you start thinking that way, like how could this one sale lead to every sale, it starts making you think a little differently of like how can you Serve someone out of Super High Level and invite them into kind of a deeper relationship with your business?

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, you know so yeah, interesting, all right, well, that's, that's a. That's a good one. I'm I know my memories bad, but I'm almost 99% sure we did not talk about that before, so that's new stuff, all right, well, steven, thank you so much for joining us again. Again, congratulations on all the success and and look forward to you know, always, you know being around there for your, your community, more and and hopefully we get to a link up. It's been a while since we've seen each other in person, so hopefully we get to link up at one of these events coming up. You know you need to make your own like, like big, like kind of like get away or event.

 

Stephen:

We're gonna go to Cancun. You want to come? I'm down, I'm down. Yeah, I'll send you down. I'll send you to work.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Put me to work, I'll, I'll serve, I'll serve, I'll serve the meals there. I'll do whatever you want, I just want to hang out with your communities.

 

Stephen:

I love that. Thanks, thanks a lot.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Please get give my regards to the family, and we'll be seeing you soon, all right.