Proven Wholesale Sourcing Webinar #4

Transcription

1 Proven Wholesale Sourcing Webinar #4 [automated message] 0:00:03 Speaker 1: Hi everybody, it's week four training of the Proven Wholesale Course. I can't believe the stuff that we have for you tonight, we've got a great mystery guest, and Robyn and I have a lot of great things planned. We've got a lot of bonuses that at this point in the course are gonna be added, some advanced things. So, we wanna provide something from this course to everybody, people that are intermediate, that are beginners, that are advanced, and tonight I think we're gonna hit on some of that. We're also gonna talk about a lot of people asking questions about, how do I get a wholesaler website, and what what should I do? And we're gonna answer those questions, and I'm going to let Robyn go right for it and dig right in, as little of time wasting as possible, we appreciate your time and we wanna get right down to the nuts and bolts here for you. 0:01:01 Speaker 2: Okay. So, I've been getting a lot of questions on a couple of things, and a lot of them were on the analysis part, so I kinda had to shift my plan a little bit and we're gonna do some review. We're gonna just quickly... I promise for those of you who got this, it's gonna be quick, we're gonna just retouch on a couple of things that people keep asking over and over again, just so we can make sure everybody has what they need in order to start. So, just for review, an EIN is your federal tax ID, it takes five minutes to get. You don't need it for the IRS probably, unless you're an employer, you have to meet certain criterias to need it, but the thing is the vendors are gonna ask for it. That's why we recommend you have the EIN, not because you're going to need one necessarily to use as an EIN as something to do payroll, but they are going to be asking to show that you are a legitimate business. So, that's why we're asking for the EIN. 0:01:57 S2: The TPT Resellers License, sales tax, Transaction Privilege License, whatever it's called in your state. So, the advantages of that is if you still do retail arbitrage, you don't have to pay sales tax in the stores that allow you to do that, it shows that you're buying for resell. They are gonna need a copy of that, hypothetically, they should all be asking you for a copy of your resell license so they can show that that state happened across state lines. And even states that don't have sales tax will have some sort of business license you can get. Now, there are 50 states, and I am a know-it-all, I'm sure that my husband would tell you that, however I don't know everything for every state, so you're gonna have to Google, "Texas Resale license application." Or, "Massachusetts Resale license certification application." And then if you have questions you're gonna need to call your state's office, because we can give you the best information we have, but really those are the people that you wanna talk to, they setup businesses all the time, this isn't gonna be... Shouldn't be new for them. Just tell them what you need, which is a reseller's license, or a TPT, if they say that there's no sales tax, then you probably still need a business license. 0:03:17 S2: Now, people are asking what a business entity is? So, sole proprietor, so when you put in your social security in as your... In Amazon as your tax ID, then you're a sole proprietor. Basically you are gonna file one tax return for you, and not a separate tax return. An LLC is 07/21/15 Page 1 of 26

2 something that you would... That my CPA recommended that we do once I started making money is that I had a separate, an LLC, it's a separate tax return, so I file as an individual, and we file as a company. It also... It can provide some liability protection, obviously things like the insurance and stuff help protect you as well, but that's what the difference between a sole proprietor and an LLC is. You don't have to have an LLC in order to do this business, but as you start to make money, more than likely your CPA will tell you to do that so that you can get the maximum tax benefits and not have to pay as much self employment tax. But I am not a CPA or I am not a lawyer, you should contact one of them. 0:04:26 S2: Your store name is just the display name, it doesn't have to match your company name. So, you can be Robyn's LLC as your business name, but your store could be Nate's Store, because Nate's my husband. Which is confusing 'cause it's also Nathan Bailey, so it doesn't have to be the same. So, in my business structure I have an LLC... 0:04:47 S1: I couldn't be that lucky, Robyn. 0:04:49 S2: Huh? 0:04:49 S1: I couldn't be that lucky, I couldn't be that lucky to have you as my wife. I just couldn't be that lucky. 0:04:53 S2: Aww. I hope Nathan's listening. Or he needs to listen again. [chuckle] Thank you, that's very nice of you. So, I have an LLC and I have an Amazon store, and the Amazon store name is different because it's... You can change it everyday, if you wanted today to be Monday's Robyn Store, and then Tuesday's Robyn Store, you can change it at any time. And then I also have an independent... I actually have a couple independent websites, some that I sell on and some that are for wholesalers to come see that we're a legitimate business, so I have a very up and down straight business structure. Now, this is straight from Seller Central where you pull in your information, the display name is at the top, see where it says "seller information"? And then it asks for your legal entity, whether you're sole proprietor, you're gonna put your social security number where it says tax identity, it's located at the bottom there, so as you can see they're separate. So, unless Amazon has something that I have not seen, I looked and there was nothing saying that your display name had to match your legal entity. 0:06:00 S2: So that's the research that I found. My website, I went to wix.com. This is a template off of wix.com, I just screen-captured the template that you get when you use wix ecommerce site. It does have a little cart, I would just edit things to make it my own. If 500 of us all go to the show with the same website, for the couple of wholesalers that are going to actually look at our website they're going to be a little confused if we all have the same website. So, you want to edit it, change it, make it a little different but not to spend a lot of time on it. This is just the second page, this is the template. I didn't do anything on this, there is nothing changed and this is how it looks, so you can make some small changes and make it your own. That's what I did. 0:06:48 S2: Now, we've been talking throughout the course how there's different ways to do it, and there's not a right and a wrong way, everybody has to find what works for them. My approach is I go to a vendor and I say, I'm a seller. If they ask where I sell, I say I sell online. I give them my website, if it looks like it's going to be a problem, I tell them that we sell on Amazon and we talk it out from there. My approach isn't the same as everybody's. Bob's is different, Bob Wiley, came on, 07/21/15 Page 2 of 26

3 he talked about his approach. Now, Nathan Bailey has a different business structure and I think that's where people are getting confused. He has a business that buys items... I don't know, Nathan, would you rather explain how you do this? He has a buying... 0:07:36 S1: Yeah, what I do is I buy things that I can turn around and resell and make money on. 0:07:42 S2: Yeah, so he's buying through one company and selling it through another, right? 0:07:46 S1: Oh, of course, absolutely. And, I'm keeping those entities separate because the business model that I use I'm usually contacting higher level sales reps of organizations and if you come across as, "Hey I'm this company. I'm an online business. I'd like to talk to you today about buying from you." They don't take you seriously, they don't take your calls, they don't return your calls. It's a little bit different because I'm running multiple tiers in my business. I've got an upper tier of reps I work with, but then I also have liquidation brokers that I work with when I buy liquidation lots of inventory. I buy closeouts, so I buy from different types of wholesalers if you will. Different suppliers at different levels that do different types, like you'll find that clothing and apparel can kind of be a different business from grocery and gourmet. Because, those grocery and gourmet people, it hasn't really been saturated, they don't really have a brand that's like Adidas that they're trying to protect. So, those grocery food and gourmet people are... I never... I tell them yeah, I sell online. I never have any problems with it, but I still don't want them to see what I'm doing, in fact I don't ever share with my clients, hey look at my account. I know there are people out there that do but I don't. I'm not going to say, "Hey look at everybody, look at what I'm selling. Come compete with me." 0:09:17 S1: I just, in the position that I'm in, I can't afford to do that, it doesn't make sense. I have partners that I do business with where I actually have agreements that I can't reveal certain accounts that we have set up. And, I have multiple accounts. But, usually when I'm buying personally for my business I buy from a buying business and in the accounting structure, I pass through that tax as I sell that inventory to my selling business, so it offsets the taxation. I have two separate entities, a buying business and a selling business. Because, you know what's funny is, I had a client the other day that we just set up a website for and that's something that we're doing now for you. So if you're having confusion on how do I set up a website to look professional, that's all I'm doing. My buying business is out there to make me look professional and reveal what my selling business... Keep from revealing what my selling business is doing for the most part, because in certain categories and interests that I'm in I have to be that way, I have to be stealth. 0:10:22 S1: In that regard, with having two separate business entities set up, a buying business and a selling business, it does a few things for me. When I go to trade shows I take my business card for both businesses because sometimes I have the opportunity to say, "Hey let's do a consignment deal. Let me be your online seller, let me be the person... Here, this is my card, look this is my online selling business." I want them to see, right. But, on the other side there are people that I don't want to and I keep those things separate for that reason. I don't recommend you sharing your seller account with anyone else so they can get ideas about what you're doing. I mean it's all preferential. I keep it very private because I've had too many people catch onto, "Oh that's what you're doing, well I'm going to do the same thing." 0:11:12 S1: But, on your end Robyn, and this is something that we teach in our liquidation investment training program. But, what I'm doing with websites for people we're just charging 07/21/15 Page 3 of 26

4 $200, if you want a Corporate Presence Website, that's what I call it. It's just a Corporate Presence Website, nothing more. It's just to show, hey here's my corporate presence, here's my EIN to provide them all the things they want to see without revealing my cards. It's kind of like poker, it's like, "Hey, here's my hand." I don't do that, that's just my... But, see I have other people that I work with that are different. 0:11:50 S2: Yeah, okay. So that's how... You work it basically like you're working with a different kind of wholesale company than I am. So its not wrong or different, or wrong or bad, it's just different. So, you have the business structure. 0:12:05 S1: It is. Everybody's different. Everybody's business will have it's own unique thing. I don't think any of us do the exact same thing. And so, it's gonna be random. But if you do need a website for your business, don't get hung up on it, don't let it hold you back. You can my assistant travis@jimcockrumcoaching.com. That's and he can very quickly help you get set up. We've done a few for people and we're probably gonna edit this out 'cause we're only gonna be able to do this for the people that we provided this to the first initial training here. So, anybody that gets access in the future, we'll probably pull that out. But for right now, if you need that and that's something holding you back, we're happy to help you get over it. But if there's tax issues, if there's CPA issues, if there's corporation set up questions, Robyn and I are really good at what do, but we're not CPAs or attorneys or legal professionals that are qualified to answer everyone's question there and everybody is unique. But we can definitely share our business experiences with you as to what we would do if we were you. So, please be active on the Facebook groups and we're happy to continue answering these questions. 0:13:22 S2: Thanks Nate. So, now back to our regular scheduled programming. So, we're gonna go back to what we were gonna cover. So, bringing new items to Amazon. When you see an item on a trade show or maybe you're getting flyers in 'cause you're, or s because you're ing suppliers and you see something that you can't find on Amazon, the first thing you need to do before you start, either nix it or get excited about it, is look on Amazon, not only by the UPC, but you also need to look by name and by brand. See if it could be under a different name or maybe they used a different UPC or maybe something. You need to look and do some research on it. 0:14:03 S2: Now, if you find an item that's not already on Amazon, then what you're gonna look for, you don't wanna just bring anything to Amazon. So, if it's a generic dollhouse and it's not on Amazon, we don't need to bring that 'cause there's plenty of other generic doll houses. Remember, Amazon customers are looking for Malibu Barbie's Dream house. They're not necessarily looking for a general doll house. So, it would have to have something unique to it. Does it have some brand or something that makes it so special, it doesn't need a brand. And I'm gonna show you an example of that in just a second. So, is it something that's new to market and something you wanna think about, is this a rising or falling trend? So, a couple months back, the selfie stick was the new hot thing. I go to Disneyland a lot and you'd see people walking around with their selfie sticks all the time, and it's basically just a stick that you can use to take a better selfie from farther away so you can get more people in it. It was really popular, but now you're starting to see things like, "I wanna hit people with the selfie stick." It's on a falling trend right now. So, that wouldn't be something I would bring to market if it's already, the trend has already passed. 0:15:13 S2: So, if you're in the toy arena, so an example would be Zhu Zhu Pets. For a while, people were trudging through the snow to get them to sell them for eight times their value, even 07/21/15 Page 4 of 26

5 more. And now, these stores kinda give these Zhu Zhu Pets away. It's just a little hamster toy but it was really popular and then it fell out of popularity. So, you wanna look and see if it's on a rising or a falling trend. 0:15:39 S2: Does it have sales in other market places? So, we found some really great sellers at ASD actually, and it wasn't on Amazon.com, but it was on Amazon UK. Or maybe there was one that was on ebay in Australia but it wasn't anywhere else. So, we're gonna either check completed listings on ebay. If you don't know how to do that, just Google, "How to check completed listings on ebay?" and it'll come up. It's a really easy thing. You just make a selection on the left hand side of your screen and it shows you what the item has sold for and you can see how many have sold. If it's on an Amazon like UK or Canada or Germany, then you can look at the sales rank on that different Amazon platform and see if there's demand on it. You can also look to see are there multiple little websites carrying this product, so independent websites, are they carrying a lot of this, especially ones that are geared into that niche. Is that something that you're seeing in other places? 0:16:45 S2: So, the next thing I do is I Google the item. So, if I Google this item, are people talking about it on forums or blogs? Like, "Hey, I saw this thing. It was really cool. Does anyone know where I can get this?" There was one item that we brought to market that didn't have anything except a physical store and they only sold one item, and it had really positive Yelp reviews, and a lot of them. So, I knew it was something that was gonna be in demand because of looking at that. Should be, or it could be really niche, and it's unique, and it fills a need. So, if you can't find that, then the other thing you can look for is is there something similar on Amazon that you can see whether or not there is demand for it. So, if it's in brand A on Amazon but you have brand B, can you see if brand A is popular enough to warrant bringing another one of a similar item to the market? 0:17:38 S2: So, I'm gonna show you two vendors that you're gonna see at ASD. So, you can see how I would actually bring something to market. So, this is an item that you'll probably see if you go to the show, and it's a scarf that contains flasks in the scarf so people can bring alcohol to places where alcohol's not allowed, or they want you to buy the alcohol. So, if I was looking to bring that item to market what I would do is I would search Amazon and look for Sippin' Scarf You Can Hide It, which is the company here, and I look for scarf flask and these are what came up, and you can see that there is another FlaskScarf. So I looked at that item and this is the price that it is on Amazon and you can see what the rank is. And so, if the rank was really good and I could see that the profit margin wholesale on that scarf was good, then I could say "Okay there is a demand and it's at the right price point, okay, I think I can bring this item to market and I think there'll be a demand for it because they're showing a demand in a similar item." 0:18:51 S2: So you can kind of infer from when... It's not a guarantee, but at least it gives you an idea. So, some considerations before bringing an item to market, do you have time to create the listing? So if you're at a trade show and you find 20 really great things, but they all need new Amazon listings, do you have the time before those items ship to get all the listings created, make sure all the photos get done and do everything? If not, you might wanna wait and see if somebody else creates that listing and then order it afterwards. If the item doesn't sell well, is it gonna put a big strain on your capital? So if you only have $500 to start with, and this company has a $300 minimum order then you're gonna have to bring something new to Amazon where you're gonna have to guess. If it doesn't go well, you're only gonna be down to $200 in capital. That doesn't give 07/21/15 Page 5 of 26

6 you a lot of wiggle room, so that really kind of puts you in an all-in situation and you're gonna have to wait for those to sell through to get your money back. 0:19:52 S2: So, especially in the beginning don't put so much into a new product where it takes up a large chunk of your capital. And I know that I've said this a lot in this course is that you need to go wide and not deep on one item. Is the item Hazmat? Does it have aerosols? Does it have a lithium battery? So you should... Remember we already said to check the Hazmat requirements? So you should be looking at those things. Is there anything that would deem it legitimately as a Hazmat concern? Now sometimes you'll have a pony in pink and a pony in blue and for some reason the pony in pink is Hazmat. You can get those reviewed and it usually takes about two weeks so you can end up being able to list those, but you wanna make sure that you're not buying something that you're gonna have to ship Greyhound merchant-fulfilled to everybody. 0:20:45 S2: And you wanna look at how deep are you gonna have to buy. If you have to buy 500 of something that's completely untested, is that a gamble that you're really willing to mak? The other thing, Nathan has suggested this a couple times, have an alternate exit strategy. So, what you wanna look at, could I sell this on ebay? Could I sell this at a garage sale? Is there a flea market that I could... How would I get rid of this if it didn't sell on Amazon? So you wanna have a way, a backup plan. If this doesn't go the way that you expect it to how are you going to liquidate this item? So some questions to ask the vendor when you're bringing something new to market: How long have they been in business? So if you've ever watched Shark Tank you'll see like a great idea and they ask the sales, and they're like "Oh $100,000" and they're like "Oh Okay." And then say they've been in business for 10 years. Well that's not so great because that means they haven't... In that 10 years they haven't gotten their business to a certain point. So if you see an item that's been on the market for six years and there's still no demand for it, that's a good indicator there might not be a demand in the future unless something has changed. 0:21:53 S2: Another great thing to ask is what are their best-selling lines? Now that doesn't always mean I'm gonna buy their best-selling lines, but I wanna know which are their fastest-selling ones so I can look to see is Amazon just... If Amazon is on this vendor are they just carrying those items? And if they're new to Amazon I do wanna bring the best-selling line because I want the one that has the best sell through and the best demand. If they're already in stores what are they seeing on reorders? Are they seeing multiple reorders from people? So just like we reorder, brick-and-mortars they'll order a case of something try it out. If it sells through they'll order more. So ask them how many cases people are reordering at a time and that kind of gives you an idea of how quickly it's selling. And what are they doing to market the product? If it's a brand new item to the market and they have no advertising strategy, then we're gonna be going off of your keywords alone so it's gotta make it... It's gotta be really niche and really special then. 0:22:48 S2: The other thing I like to ask is, do they expect to be in specialty stores or big box? 'Cause if they're gonna be planning on... If they say "Oh yeah, I just closed a deal with Walmart it's gonna be in every store next week." Well you need to know that because then there's gonna be people who are getting it on clearance from retail arbitrage and that's gonna change the marketplace for this item. So that's something that I like to ask especially if it's something that's newer to the item or it's on a rising trend. And then especially this time of year you're gonna see, I'm sure a lot of you who went to the Toy Fair notice that sometimes they'll have a new item and they'll say it ships in June or it ships in July. So just because an item is at a show doesn't doesn't necessarily mean it's available to purchase or that they would send it at that point. So sometimes you'll place the order 07/21/15 Page 6 of 26

7 and that item won't come for six weeks or won't come for eight weeks or sometimes it won't come till June. So just like you did before you wanna make sure you know when it's gonna ship. So if you bring something new to Amazon you're gonna need to create new listings. So this is when to create a new listing. 0:24:00 S2: When the item is not anywhere in the marketplace and you search by name UPC and keyword. Now, you're never going to create a new listing to avoid competition and so if you're trying to just create a new listing so you don't have to compete with Amazon, chances are that item is gonna get merged or it's just not gonna get the same traffic so don't do that. But if there's only an outdated version or you can't find it at all, that's when you would create a new listing. And you have to search by doing the Add a Product in Seller Central. If you just search on Amazon.com in a search bar, if it's out of stock it won't show. So this is, the bottom half of this screen is the screenshot so if you go in Seller Central, Inventory, Add a Product... So if I was gonna add that scarf I would enter scarf flask in there and see if it came up with the item. So put in the UPC, search by name, see if I could find it that way. 0:25:00 S2: And then if I can't find it through any of those ways by hitting the search, then below it you see the Create A New Product button. If you're creating new Amazon listings, you wanna fill out as much as you can. Don't try to rush through this process because you're really gonna be cutting your, you're gonna be selling yourself short. Because having quality listings is a big, big part of whether or not you're gonna get that search traffic and you're gonna get the sales that you want. You need to spend the time to have quality images and you're gonna use merchant words and Amazon product ads to help you find some solid keywords. And we're gonna be talking... Me and my husband are gonna be doing a little bonus section about keywords and enhancing listings and Amazon product ads so you guys can be expecting some more information on that. But there's a lot of really great information on Amazon product ads on Seller Central. 0:25:55 S2: So I would go to Add A Product, the first thing you're gonna do. And then hit Create A New Product and then it will tell you which categories it should... It'll narrow down the category you should put it in. So I would say this would be in Alcohol and Spirits Flasks. So I would select that one and then it takes me to this page. So some people make the mistake of just putting the vital information with the stars. There's actually a lot more that you need to put in. So anything with an arrow, if you have it, you should put it. So if you have the manufacturer name, if you know the model number, if it's a three pack, if it's blue, if it's red, what the brand name is if that's different from the manufacturer, the UPC or ENS is required. So if it's... So we carry a wooden item that does not have a UPC. We had to purchase a UPC in order to sell that item. So there are... You have to have a UPC whether or not you purchase it, or it has one that the manufacturer has already purchased. 0:27:06 S2: So I skipped over Offer and Images. Images you just, I'm gonna go over the details that offer screen is really just the same thing that you fill out any time you list how many you have, are they new or used, and that stuff, so you already know how to do that. Images we're gonna talk about later. So this description field is very important. So if you've looked at an Amazon listing and you've noticed the little bullet points, this is where you put the bullet points, the key product features. They should not be keyword stuff. So don't put Size 6, Size 5, 3T, a whole bunch, you would do in ebay where you're just putting a bunch of keywords in to try to get it to come up in Search. That doesn't work well on Amazon. What you want to do is do benefit laden statements. So "This product will save your life in this situation and this product makes julienne fries, folds down to a compact easy 07/21/15 Page 7 of 26

8 to travel size." Whatever you can picture in your head that ad you've seen on TV guy saying, those are the things. The big, the big, big selling points that your product has. That's where those go. 0:28:12 S2: Now don't try to use a bunch of HTML. We have seen that at this point in time Amazon has, it has been allowing people to... Or at least not said anything about people using the paragraph break which is that open with a greater than, less than sign with a P in the middle of it and then the bold. But if people get crazy with that, they're gonna nix that as well. On the product description, you need to make sure it's as detailed as possible. So take what they have on the manufacturer's web site and then add to it. If it's a grocery item, make sure you have at least if you don't have a... You need to have a picture of the nutritional label and if not, you need to put it in the description as well. I can tell you as a mother of a child with food allergies that I will not buy something if I cannot see that nutrition label because I need to see exactly what's in there. And especially on a lot of these foods, that are gonna be niche, people are gonna be looking for certain things and so those can be important things to put in there. 0:29:18 S2: So as much detail as possible. You have have 2,000 characters to put in there. On keywords, skip the platinum stuff, I don't know anyone who's cool enough to be platinum. Well, if I do actually I think I might, but I don't think you're allowed to talk about it if you are. So on Search Terms you're going to put your 50 characters per line and you don't have to put a comma. So you can put red, you can put engine truck, engine train, all the different keywords that you would use for that. So you can... This is where you keyword stuff, so see if you look at the example, you've dark chocolate, apples, cookies, everything that's in the item. 0:30:00 S2: So like if I was gonna sell something from the Little Mermaid, I could probably put Little Mermaid, Ariel, Eric, Sebastian, all of the names of the characters that are gonna be relevant. Now, one thing you cannot do is let's say you're selling a shoe and it's not Nike, but you wanna get the Nike search terms, you cannot put Nike in there to try to get Nike customers to come to your site. That's against the rules. So, it has to be search terms that are related to your specific item that you're selling. With these other things, really simple, you just check off the ones that apply, provide your own terms, you should fill these out as much as you can. 0:30:47 S2: This next page is usually where people's eyes cross over and they don't do anything in here. Now, one thing that I really wanted to touch on is the manufacturer's suggested retail price. So if the MSRP on an item is 49.99, you can put it there and that's how you get it to put the line in there that makes it look like it's on sale if it's less than that, which is great if you're selling it under the manufacturer's suggested retail price. However, let's say the MSRP is $10 and you put that in there and it's selling for 50, then what will happen is the buy box will be suppressed. And what that means is, that instead of saying like "Buy now" they have the little add to cart button, it'll say available from these sellers and a little tiny link. And so, that's what's happening there. Now, you shouldn't artificially that MSRP is the MSRP so you can choose to put it in there or you can choose to leave it blank but just know that that's how the system works. Put in the product dimensions, people wanna know that, the shipping weight and then if you scroll down, that's where you put the FDA weights so that it's labeled shipping something. I forget what it is now, but if you scroll down that's where you're gonna fill it out. 0:32:06 S2: So you're gonna fill out the offer details and hit save. If you don't hit save you're probably gonna cry 'cause you just spent 30 minutes on it and now you have to start over. So make sure you hit save before you finish and then it will come up with a little box giving you the ASIN. If 07/21/15 Page 8 of 26

9 you'd go back into your inventory and it's not there right away, that's normal, it takes a little time. But if you can search by ASIN it'll pull it up, it just won't show up in your managed inventory right away always, it's a busy time sometimes, it can be a little bit of a lag. So, back to the images, it could be a 1,000 or it could be a 1,001 but you have to have that many pixels on the longest side. You need to have a clear white background. We use Remove the Background, some people use Clipping Magic, they really like it. We are doing a lot of volume so we use Remove the Background because it's fast. If you have a VA that is good with Photoshop we've also had VAs do it. Right now, we're just having them straighten the picture and crop it 'cause the picture should be taking up about 85% of the space. 0:33:16 S2: So, we'd have them do that and then we sent it to Remove the Background to remove any white space. So that's how you get it to look like it's all part of the same page instead of having the little white box around it. So we use a Lightbox, they're not very expensive. I think we got ours for like $40, maybe 60. Make sure that the pictures are clean, professional, and show all important selling point. So, you wanna check the style guides for that category to make sure that you're following the rules especially if you're selling any clothing and shoes. Like luggage, all those things that have very specific, like the rules on images. On shoes, the shoe has to point a certain way and everything has to be done in a certain fashion for uniformity. So make sure you're really looking at those. Now, this does not mean you have to go out and buy a $3000 camera, if there's a really cool thing, ASD has like a $3000 Lightbox that will take a picture and Remove the Background right there. You don't need to go crazy with this stuff. 0:34:20 S2: We take our pictures still with an iphone and a Lightbox and then Remove the Background and we've got great pictures. Our listings are usually better than what you see from some of the other vendors just because we've taken the time to Remove the Background and make sure that the pictures are clear. One more thing about removing the background, don't take a picture of an item on your chair or you modeling the item. You need to do this professional. We were selling Plush for a while and I noticed in the picture, they took a picture of the Plush on a chair and you could see a little cat dropping behind the bear. Now, especially if you're buying that for a child or your grandchild, that's gross. We see a lot of food pictures where they're not made professionally, they don't look professional and so it makes you question the food. So if you have a listing that is not selling well, the first thing you should check is your pictures. The second thing you should check is your keywords but the first thing you should check is my picture, high quality and is it professional. 0:35:36 S2: So, variations. You might hear some people talk about, "I wanna create a variation listing" or "I wanna create a parent child." So, these have to be used with a flat file. Now, flat files sounds really fancy. It's just a fancy word for an excel sheet. So there's some great tutorials on Amazon seller support. I actually went to... If you go to your Amazon Seller support. You go to Seller Central and you click on Help and then you type in variations. The very first one you can see right there is Learn How to Create a Variation Detail Page Using an Inventory File Template. There's some really great tutorials on that. That's how my husband is amazing at this, learned. He really just took the time to read the tutorials and watched them and you're going to have a couple of errors and you're going to need to contact Seller Support sometimes but it is very much worth it especially if you want to sell eventually in clothing or shoes, you really need to master those flat files in order to make those variation listings and really broaden what you're able to bring to the market. 07/21/15 Page 9 of 26

10 0:36:46 S2: Now, if you have a variation. Let's say the company has it in pink, blue and yellow and now they're coming out with purple, you can add a variation. We have had success adding a variation using a flat file but usually we get to a certain point and then we have to contact Seller Support. But you can't just contact Seller Support without trying first. They want to see that you at least made the effort to try to go through it but we have noticed that sometimes it does snag up. If you're having problems, contact Seller Support, see if you can get them to help you finish getting those listings but they are going to expect you to have a base knowledge, so have read the tutorials already. So, this is an example of a variation listing. I needed to buy these from my mother-in-law. So, I just took a little screenshot. If you're wondering what a variation or parent-child listing is, it is just like this. So, this comes in red and blue and a darker pink, and lavender and red. If you click on a different one, that's going to be what you're going to get. 0:37:50 S2: If you're trying to sell like let's say you wanted to sell these pink socks, you're going to notice the ASIN doesn't change when you click on each one of these. Remember a couple of slides back when I said you had to search in the added product thing, that's where you're gonna want to search for a variation, too. I will search for silver non-slip socks and then it would come up with the pink and the blue, red variation and then I would click on the one that I want. I think that inventory lab has started to support variation listings a little bit better. I'm not on any of the other listing programs so I don't really know on those but I know that you can do it that way manually. 0:38:34 S2: So, a reminder for creating listings, use the style guides and the titles. Don't keyword titles. Your title should not be a giant paragraph. They actually set out guidelines so they want the product name and then the size and then the quantity. They want it in a certain order and done in a certain way. The reason that they want it that way is because it makes Amazon look better and it makes the customers more comfortable. So they're not doing that just to make your life a hassle or to make it harder for you to rank in searches. They're doing it so it's a better experience for the customer so there's more customers so we all get more sales. Follow the style guidelines. If you're confused, then if you go into that seller support area, you can search for clothing style guidelines. If you're already approved in clothing or shoes, then you probably have already seen this because you had to look at it in oder to get approved. So, do that. 0:39:40 S2: Make sure you use the bullet points. Make sure you fill out the keywords. Don't rush and try to just slam something up there to get it up there. If you want it to go well, you want to have good search results for your listings that you're bringing to Amazon, make sure you're filling those delicate things out. Now, to promote your listing. The most important thing you need to do, in my opinion, is to have a solid listing. We use Amazon product ads to get targeted keywords and we're going to show you how to do that in the bonus section. We also will temporally lower our price and slowly raise it back up. What that does is it gets it into the search algorithms in our experience. Also, if you can get it into where people who viewed this also viewed this. Then it will get it some more clicks as well. 0:40:24 S2: Something to think about with Amazon product ads is it only run the ads when you have the buy box. So, it makes sure if the sale does go to you, you're not just paying for advertising for the item in general. The other thing that you can do is you can give samples to reviewers to get your product out there. You can never say that you're going to pay them or not even just say. You can never pay them for their review. You can offer them a free product in exchange for an honest review and that means good or bad. That doesn't necessarily mean a positive review. 07/21/15 Page 10 of 26

11 0:40:58 S2: So, some wholesaling purchasing tips. As you guys are starting to do... You've gotten more and more lists. Things that you want to be thinking about as you go forward for the rest of the year. You're going to watch for trends, for things that you want to wholesale. If you see ugly sweaters are really coming in or paleo food, something like that. Some sort of niche that's on the rise. That's what you want to be looking for and by the time everybody knows something, now, it's an oversaturated niche. If you're finding that you're getting list after list after list and there's just nothing, then my word of advice to you would be that you're going to something that's oversaturated or too general. Like gluten-free is too big and saturated of a market. Now, you need to have something else that makes it unique. As things get popular, you're going to have to find an even deeper niche. So, maybe things that are gluten-free that don't have corn or people who have glutenfree are usually also casein-free which means dairy-free. So you know, you're gonna wanna look for something even... Bring it down to even smaller niche or back out, and find something... A different niche. So if you're seeing a lot of lists where you're not finding the margins you want, you're going for something that's too general. 0:42:16 S2: Buy in advance of the season. So you should be restocking for the current season now, and leave it so you have a little extra at the end of the season. We have water balloons, that sell into September, October, sometimes even November, and then usually we run out because they don't... Our supplier doesn't make them during the winter months. So you wanna stock for a little bit past the season, but if I wanna sell squirt guns this summer, I'm already starting to look for those items. Because let's say it's gonna be March here in a little bit, by the time I find a distributor I set up my account it's gonna be mid-march, and then by the time they send it to me, another two weeks it's gonna be April, then it's gonna set me another week to send it in to Amazon, so we're already... By the time it gets in there, we're already looking at the beginning part of April and that's where it's warmed up. And here in Arizona it's already warm enough where I saw somebody on Facebook where their kids were swimming outside yesterday. 0:43:24 S2: So I mean, I know it's hard to believe for yous that are in the negative 30's, but the temperature's really different all over the place. So you wanna make sure that you're ready ahead of time for those season things. So I would be restocking, this is a gardening season that's coming up, so I would've already made my initial purchases for gardening, and now I'm gonna be looking for a summer things in August when ASD comes again, then I'm looking for fourth quarter stuff. So Christmas, Thanksgiving, maybe some Halloween if I can get it fast enough. 0:44:00 S2: So with wholesale you have to allow longer lead time than with retail arbitrage or online arbitrage. Now it's similar to online, but you wanna make sure you give yourself some time. So usually most companies will order... Will send you your order within one to two weeks. Every now and again you'll get somebody it'll take them a longer time to... For them... From the time you placed the order to the time you receive it. I usually plan on one to three weeks, and then if it's a small order and if you're not getting a lot of other orders you really should be able to get that... You know, if you get that shipment delivered at your door at 10:30 in the morning, you could really have it back out heading towards Amazon that same day. But we allow one to three days because we have a constant stream of items coming in to our warehouse and depending on how far away you have to send, we're looking at another two to 10 days to be received by Amazon's warehouse. 0:44:57 S2: So you should be placing orders to stock your levels for 30 days out. Amazon actually has a whole thing on the... In the inventory health area that talks about restocking and they recommend two to 13 weeks. I am between 30 and 60 days. So if I place an order for an item, I 07/21/15 Page 11 of 26

12 want to have about... Once that order arrives at Amazon, I wanna have between 60 and 30 days before it goes out of stock again. So and then I'll re-order, and next week I'm gonna show you exactly how we do re-ordering and exactly how to figure out how much time you'll have left with your stock, how many weeks of coverage, and where to find that in the reports and how we use those reports in order to maximize our profit on our re-orders. 0:45:48 S2: So I know thinking about Christmas might make some of your heads hurt already cause we just finished, but you really wanna start planning for fourth quarter as early as possible. So you should... Depending on what category you're in. You don't necessarily see a triple or quadruple in let's say grocery, but depending on what categories you're in, you can see your sales triple or quadruple. So you could be doing 20,000 a month during regular months, and then have it be$60,000 to $80,000 in December and that wouldn't be completely unheard of. Sales get really crazy for fourth quarter. If you haven't experienced it, brace yourself, and for those of you have, you wanna make sure you don't over-buy but you can... I usually quadruple what I normally order, and that's been a pretty good number for me. But I sell... In fourth quarter I sell about 70% toys, and then in January... You know how we talked about stocking ahead of time so mid December I stop... We slow down on our toy purchases, we just re-stock, and then I go more heavily into groceries. So last... In December we were 70% toys, and then in January I think we were 50% grocery. 0:47:08 S2: So you wanna try... If you wanna try to level out, so you don't have the big peaks and valleys in your business, try to get in multiple categories. You know, the gardening category comes up at a different time than the summer category. Like back to school stuff is a different time than fourth quarter. So you wanna try to... If you can expand into different categories, it'll allow for less volatility in your cycle, and for those of you who are about to head into your first fourth quarter, you wanna stock some of that money away to make sure that you're able to get through some of the slow periods. Save some money throughout the year and get your holiday orders in early. A lot of wholesale companies will run out of stock. If you try to order something the second week in November, they might not have any for the rest of the year; that will be it. 0:48:01 S2: So sometimes I have had a vendor sell-out completely in October and so that's all that there was for the rest of the fourth quarter. So make sure you get your orders in September-October and you can always plan on re-ordering again but I kind of always hold my breath anytime I have to re-order after October because there's a good chance that if its a really hot item that they might not have anymore available. Especially when your working with these smaller companies. So as you're placing orders once you know what SKUs or what items you plan on ordering your gonna multiply that by the number of items are in each case. 0:48:42 S2: I know that I want to get widget A and it comes in a case pack of six. So I can get six, 12 or 18 but I can't get 10 because they're gonna want you to order in case packs. So your gonna add up everything you want and your gonna see if you hit the minimum opening order and if not you need to reassess. Is this something I want to go deeper on and maybe take a little more risk or do I want to hold of on ordering this until later. If you're close, if maybe you've hit the minimum order but maybe you just need $200 for free shipping and the shipping would have been $200 it makes sense to order that extra amount and get the extra items and get that free shipping. 0:49:24 S2: If you're not... If they don't offer free shipping always ask. Say "since I'm a new customer can I get free shipping? Since I'm a new customer is there any way that we could do net 30 or I'm gonna pre-pay this order can I get net 30 on the next order?" So don't be afraid to ask your 07/21/15 Page 12 of 26

13 gonna get no's whether it's can I sell this item on Amazon? Can I get free shipping? Can I get terms? Your gonna get no, just don't take those no's personally. They're just doing... 0:49:53 S1: One thing I want to add to that, I will tell you, if you ask it confidently they'll probably give you the confident answer that you want. I pretty much do everything now on net 30 and it's just because you get used to it. So don't be afraid to ask the question. And if you ask it confidently more than likely you'll get the confident answer that you want. But if you get shot down don't... None of this is personal just say Okay, yeah once we get... Maybe once we build a relationship we can probably get to there. I just say that's general what I do with most of the vendors or suppliers that I work with. 0:50:35 S2: Yeah and Nathan is a 100% right... I've even noticed that with the Amazon question, that I don't get that as much now that I'm more confident but when I had Rochelle start she got it a lot more when she first started and now she's getting it less too. So if you come up confident to a booth and you say "Okay here's my order, I'm assuming I get free shipping" then that's a lot different than "Is there anyway maybe? I don't know maybe I could get free shipping?" So Nathans a Thank you for bringing that up cause that's a 100% right. The attitude makes a big difference. 0:51:12 S2: So I think a couple of people have already run into this. They might ask for a credit sheet. If they do don't panic. Even if you don't have good credit it's not a credit sheet like when you get credit for a card or a credit card. A lot of times there gonna ask for trade references and those are other vendors that you've bought from. So maybe you have bought something from another wholesale company or even a liquidator, anything that if they called you would be on record, then that would be something you can do. If you're really in a pinch you could try to use a vendor that maybe you've used as a service but if you can avoid that I would try to. The other thing you might want to do is just hold off on that order, wait till you've placed a couple of orders and then come back to this order and then fill out the credit sheet. They're really just looking to see if you're gonna pay on time and to make sure you haven't racked up debts with other companies. Especially if you're net 30. 0:52:12 S2: Now if they hand me a credit sheet and I know I'm gonna pre-pay I might say "do you really want me to fill out this whole section or since I'm gonna pre-pay can I just cross this out?" and sometimes they'll go "oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm sorry just cross that part out. That's doesn't apply to you 'cause your not asking for terms right now." So if you don't want to do it on terms then you can sometimes just have them cross it out and you can pre-pay it. So the payment expectations, as far as what they're gonna expect is going to vary by industry. So for some reason in the grocery industry they seem more likely than in other industries to just send you the goods and send you a bill afterwards. Especially if you're using a small company. However, in toys, home and kitchen I've seen that they usually expect you to pre-pay with a credit card. 0:53:06 S2: I have only once ever been asked for a check at a trade show and that was because I was buying the booth. Cause It was a show local here in Phoenix. Every other time credit card has always been the way to go and it doesn't have to be a credit card for other Dave Ramsey people, it can be a debit card. You wanna check and make sure what kind of fraud protection 'cause business accounts don't get the same fraud protection as regular personal checking accounts. So you wanna check in to that and see if you wanna have a card that you use specifically for purchases. And there's a lot that... Some of them will send you an invoice upon receipt so they'll send the item with 07/21/15 Page 13 of 26