Proven Performance Inventory Module 4: How to Create a Listing from Scratch 00:00 Speaker 1: Alright guys. Welcome to the next module. How to create your first listing from scratch. Really important thing here to know. We are not creating this listing to be fully optimized. Well, you might ask "Well, that's crazy bro. Why?" Let me ask you a question. We don't know what to optimize it with yet. Okay? Remember, this whole process is to find out the golden data. Okay? We wanna find out exactly what people are searching for. Because why? We want no more guessing. I talk to people everyday about Amazon and they are like "Oh, I'm gonna do this, and I'm gonna go after this. And I'm gonna use this for sure" "Well why?" "Well this piece of software told me that." That's good. That's a good basis for sure but you can use the Amazon sponsored ads to find exactly what they're searching for. And I'd like to know exactly what they're searching for because remember no one really knows exactly what Amazon is doing. Especially those... The different software that's out there. And I use software too and you'll see how I do it but I still go through this process on every product that I wanna bring on to Amazon. 01:16 S1: So, when we are creating this listing, we are creating it so that it's acceptable to Amazon and it could run the sponsored ads but we are not optimizing yet. That's later after we get the data. So, what I like to do is I actually work off of a separate document I have had way too many times when I've created a listing, and even when I'm optimizing a listing. So, spending a ton of time on it and Amazon just shuts down. So, I like to work off of a separate document and then copy and paste it in. I'll show you guys that separate document. From there, we input it into Amazon. The most important thing here right now because you're not optimizing your listing. You're not building your final listing here. It's what I call "Don't major in the minors." Okay? So, don't worry about one little check box, don't worry about one little section where Amazon is asking you a question. If it's not mandatory right now, don't fill it out. Okay? Because the whole point of this exercise is to have Amazon tell you what people are searching for, so that you have no more guessing. Okay? 02:27 S1: So, my word of caution. Don't major in the minors. A lot of people get stuck on this step, and they never complete the process which is the most important process. You have to get your item active on Amazon. Remember you don't have any data yet, you don't... You just have what I call assumptions, and that's fine. Assumptions are good but let's validate those assumptions. Okay? So, let's look at my product creation template. It's very, very, very, very, very simple. But that's why I like it cause we need to be simple at this step. And I'll click over to Amazon in a second but I like to work off this template. It's very easy for me. Okay. So, product name. Keep it very, very simple. The way you wanna build out your product name is you want your product name to match whatever type of product you just bought. So, for example, I bought surf wax. I want to potentially sell surf 11/12/15 Page 1 of 6
wax and a surf wax remover. Well, I'm not gonna go in much more detail than that because I really wanna know how many people a day are searching for surf wax. How many people a day are searching for a surf wax remover. I'm not gonna go into this premium... You see those listings, the keywords stuff, everything like that. That is nightmare status on Amazon. 03:47 S1: I like to start with what I think people are gonna be searching for the most. I think they are gonna be searching for surf wax. I'm actually curious. I don't even know if people search for surf wax remover. So, I have that in my title as well. But you can do this for anything. I'll do different examples, okay? My daughter loves to do pretend play. So, let's say you guys are going to try to post a pretend play princess dress. That would be your title, pretend play princess dress cause you're gonna wanna see how many people are searching for pretend play princess dress. How many people are searching for pretend play, how many people are searching for princess dress. You can break these things out and you'll see in the next couple of modules. But keep your title very short and sweet because you don't wanna convolute your data. Really know... For your product name make it short and sweet, and to the point. So, my product name is surf wax and surf wax remover. Okay? That's it. Nice and simple. 04:56 S1: The brand name, Sticky Bumps. I didn't go out and source a container from China so that I can put my own label on it. I had literally went online to test this whole thing out. I bought from Sticky Bumps, they're one of my favorite surf brands. And I... I'm gonna use their wax and I bought a surf wax remover... I think I bought it off Amazon actually. So, I put these two together, surf wax, surf wax remover. I'm gonna test the validity, I'm gonna... Amazon will tell me how many people are searching for this types of items. And then from that, I will rework my listing to have it to be fully optimized. Again, this is just this boring no-guessing process but I love it because it makes it safe on buying the right product. And sometimes look, sometimes we buy the wrong product. And you'll see later, down the road on this listing something that's really right on this one and something that nobody really wants or nobody is looking for. Okay? And so these are really interesting components to what we're doing, 'cause I'm telling you people will guess. People will guess, people will guess, people will guess. And they do it, and they think their gut's telling them the right thing, but most of the time, unfortunately, they got... They should have let the data do the talking. 06:12 S1: So, real simple template, my product name, surf wax, surf wax remover. If you're gonna be doing any type of bundle, keep it short and sweet, that's the point of this process is, it should be a pretty quick process of throwing your first listing up. Brand name, Sticky Bumps, that's the actual brand name. Price, I get a lot of questions on how to do the pricing of this on your first run. Okay? So, what I like to do, and I can't do it right now on video just because it's gonna slow down my screens, 'cause I got a lot of open screens right now. The... When you're researching your price to do for your first listing, what I like to do is, I like to find the average price on Amazon. So, for surf wax, the average price was 14.99. All I did is I went on to Amazon. I typed in surf wax, and looked at an average blend of surf wax prices. 07:12 S1: What I would do eventually down this listing is I would price it at it's highest, the highest premium price for surf wax. So, let's say, the highest premium price for surf wax was 19.99, I would test it out at 19.99. And then if the lowest price point for surf wax is 11.99, I would also test that at 11.99. But on this first round, I like to do it as an average. So, I average out the prices so that mine is not drastically low, 'cause that's gonna skew your data. I don't do it drastically high 'cause that's also gonna skew your data. I like to do it right in the medium blend. So, I'm an average Joe blow on this listing, so that I can get true data on how my product would perform. So, 14.99 is my price, and 11/12/15 Page 2 of 6
it's funny 'cause I could actually buy this stuff retail and make money at 14.99. But that's what I'm saying, you don't have to order containers from China. It is what makes me laugh to this whole thing. 08:09 S1: Alright, so next is... I hope that makes sense on the price. So, get... Go on, do just a quick search of whatever product you're selling. So, if you're selling surf wax, use surf wax. If you're selling princess dresses, do princess dresses, see an average price blend, and use that price. I like to typically do it there, and you'll see it on the Amazon, there's a price, so, 29.99 and then I typically like to put it on sale for 14.99. What that means is, it's just Amazon tends to love sales a lot more than your regular price. And I'll show you when we're creating a listing exactly how that works. 08:45 S1: Next is your UPC, because like I said, you have to bring a unique product on the Amazon. Maybe the product you have already has, maybe it's not currently listed on Amazon, and it does have a UPC, you can take that product and bring it on to Amazon, that's fine. You use that UPC. I'm creating a unique bundle so, I needed to have my own UPC, and I grabbed those UPCs from... I think I originally bought them on ebay. You could buy them on ebay. You can buy them in a lot of different places. I definitely recommend, if you're gonna follow this process, you have a database of... Or a reserve of UPCs. They're very, very cheap. I think I pay about 30 cents, 25 cents a UPC 'cause I buy them in bulk. So, they're well worth the purchase. I typically like to hold 500 at a time, so that I always... That's the worse. It's just to run out of UPCs, it's kind of like running out of toilet paper. So, make sure that you go out and go on ebay, type in UPCs for sale, and get it. It immediately gets emailed over to you, super, super easy. 09:54 S1: Okay, next. Key product features and guys all I did on this was I just copied and pasted, or I just created headlines according to Amazon's when you build out your product. So, that's what these bold parts are. It's just better to save it on a separate document 'cause Amazon sometimes isn't friendly and will not complete your listing after you spent some time on it. So, I like to have it on my template so I can copy and paste. 10:22 S1: Alright. Keep product features, again, don't major in the minors. It's not that big of a deal right now. So, key product features that I did for mine, this is actually supposed to be... Let's see. This is supposed to be a surf wax remover. So for product features, you don't want to... You don't want to go into any detail again there's no point right now. [10:53] I just put three cold water [10:55]. You have a princess dress, a beautiful princess... Right? It doesn't matter. You're not trying to sell anyone on the product, you're collecting the data. So, don't spend a lot of time on the key product features. You just want to have it to where your ad can run, that's the whole point of this process right now, is have it up so your ads, your sponsored ads, can run. 11:17 S1: So, very, very short and sweet on the key product features, all you have to do is explain a couple of things, if you had a princess dress, you can say, "Sizes 4 to 6." I don't even fill out all the areas yet, and people are probably like "That's crazy, it's not optimized." Well, I don't know what to optimize it for yet. I like to see the data first, and then I go, "Okay, people are searching for this. They're concerned about this. A lot of people look at this." And then, from there, I take that data and I update my product name, my key features. And then for product description, very simple, "If you love surfing, you'll enjoy the surf wax special bundle. This bundle comes with six premium surf wax." Again, very, very short and sweet. Very anti what other people teach, because right now, you don't know what to buy. Okay? You don't know what to buy... Or you don't know what to buy, you don't know what to write. Don't spend time stressing about this because that's the whole point of this 11/12/15 Page 3 of 6
exercise. 12:08 S1: The next part is the back-end search terms. Now, your back-end search terms are extremely important. I mean, extremely important. And there's a lot of different schools of taught on it but I can tell you firsthand, what we do, and I get... This part is so important to what you guys are going to build out. And you really shouldn't even put anything in there yet. That's the crazy part because you don't know what the search terms are. It's like, "Yeah, but I use this pieces." No, no, no, no, no. You really don't know. Okay? That's the point in this process. We're gonna run the sponsored ads, so you know what search terms to put in that back end. So you can put one or two in right now, that's fine. Honestly, I'm gonna leave it blank because it doesn't really matter to me putting those in right now because I don't know what the heck I'm putting in. I don't know what people are searching for when they search for surf wax. So... Or if people are even searching for it. That's really important to me to understand that before I start putting different search terms into Amazon. I actually leave it blank, and then I come back to it after the process. 13:14 S1: So that's our template. Let's go ahead and kick over to creating a product on Amazon. So, it's pretty simple. You actually just go to your inventory dropdown at a product. You do have to be a pro-seller on Amazon. All that means is, you do have to be paying 39.99 a month, well worth your investment. We did that even when we had less than $400 to spend. So, I just wanna throw that out there. 13:44 S1: Next, after you go to inventory at a product, you'll be redirected to this page, which then you'll create a new product listing. And sorry, guys. I had... I opened up different windows just so my computer wouldn't stall out. It's a lot of bandwidth were sucking up here. Alright, then you're taken to the category section. And this is where a lot of people will just stall out, and it's important. But you have to know what's important, what's not as important at this crossroad. Okay, what is important? This first category, you choose. Okay, the first category you choose, you definitely want it in the right category. One category you never ever in a million years wanna put anything in, is everything else. But you do wanna make sure that your item is in the correct category to start. 14:38 S1: So mine's surf wax, I would not wanna put it in grocery or electronics. It's gonna mess up our whole process or music or jewelry. The closest category that I can think of is sporting goods. Surfing is a sport. It makes sense, so just make sure it makes logical sense the category you're gonna put in. Princess Dress Up could be clothing, but it's probably more a pretend play toys and games. Okay? I'm just trying to give you guys some perspectives. 15:07 S1: Okay, after you choose this main category, then it's gonna start breaking it down into the subcategories. This is where people get like, "Whoa," and they will spend hours trying to find the exact set up. This stuff changes all the time, and that's what a lot of people don't know. These subcategories change all the time. There's really not a benefit to spending a lot of time, at this point, on the exact category but you wanna make your best guess. I'm just letting you know it's not the end of the world if you don't find the perfect subcategory for what you're looking for. This one did have a pretty close comparison. I found surfing, so sporting goods, surfing. 15:50 S1: At this point, I wouldn't even care what I click on this next round because I'm now getting into subcategory of a subcategory of a subcategory. So surfing equipment, and then I actually found surfboard wax. So I found a perfect fit. I got lucky. That honestly rarely happens to find that perfect fit but don't get hung up, don't major in the minors on that. Just go ahead and keep 11/12/15 Page 4 of 6
pushing through 'cause the whole point of this is to get your stuff running so that you know what people are searching for, not so you have the perfect subcategory of a subcategory of a subcategory. 16:22 S1: So we go ahead and select this, and that would then take us to our ad, a product page. And this is where, "Oh my gosh, look at all this information we got to put in. Oh my gosh, oh my gosh." No, not really. We're just gonna do the vital info. We're gonna do the very, very basic stuff because we're not optimizing our listing yet. And for the most part, some of this stuff is just totally useless information. 16:45 S1: So, let's go ahead and fill out the vital info off of our template. So, we're gonna go ahead and just copy and paste, guys, so product name. That's why I like this template. You can just plug and play. Manufacturer, brand name. We said it was Sticky Bumps. This is where it's funny. So, it's asking for a manufacturer part number that doesn't necessarily apply toward surf wax, so I'm just gonna put in a filler right now for that. Let's see if it'll take that. I mean again, it's just... Amazon's such a huge catalogue. There are certain things they try to apply in the incorrect situation. That's why I'm saying, don't major in the minors. And it's like, "Oh, my gosh. I don't have a manufacturer part number for my surf wax." That's because no manufacturer part number exists for surf wax. And then, here I'm gonna put Sticky Bumps. Okay, the rest of this information, I really, only like the vital information. 18:00 S1: You can tell the vital information 'cause it has an asterisk by it. Condition is new, and again, I'm just going off my other template. We said the price was $29.99, and this is the sale process. I like to do this. I like to put it on sale, Amazon likes this more in their algorithm. Start date, we'd put today, maybe the end date, we'd put... Depending... I like to run my ads for about seven days, so I'd put seven days on it. Run the sale for seven days. And, okay, so down here, this is really important. You can do two things. You can... If you just wanted to collect the data really quickly, you can put this item up as, "I want to ship this item myself." And then it would just ask you the quantity that you have, right. Well, it's not gonna pop up right now, so here. Let's see if it will pop up. It would ask you the quantity that you have right here. You can feel... Feel free to put... To do this. My only warning for you is, you won't get as much data, because people love fulfillment by Amazon. They love... If they're a Prime member, they look for items that are Prime-oriented. 19:20 S1: So, your data might be skewed a little bit. But if you're in a time crunch, you just don't wanna the send stuff into Amazon. I relate to that too, just because we're really good at reading the data now. And for the most part, we actually do "merchant fulfilled," because we need to see the data really quick. Here's your tradeoff. If you want your data really, really fast... Like, the day of... Do it "merchant fulfilled." If you have time, and you wanna wait, and you want the perfect data, do it for FBA. I actually recommend doing it FBA the first time, because you're gonna get real, real data. The merchant fulfilled data can be confusing sometimes, so I don't always recommend it. All right, so that's your very basic offer info. Again, don't worry about the other stuff. It's just not important, especially at this juncture. 20:07 S1: Okay, images. You're gonna wanna take a very, very simple white background picture. Amazon has very specific guidelines for their pictures. Again, I don't recommend you don't follow their guidelines. But for the sake of right now, and for the sake of what you're trying to do, get a picture up, okay? Don't spend 10 hours trying to take the perfect picture, 'cause you might not even sell that exact product. [chuckle] So, get a picture up. Get it going, don't spend a ton of time on it. It's just not... You're just not at a point yet where you even know what to focus on with the picture. 11/12/15 Page 5 of 6
Okay? That's the other part. You don't even know what you're gonna focus on with the picture. So I have surf wax, and surf wax remover. Well, what if people just want the surf wax remover? What if that's what people are searching for? Or what if people just care about the surf wax, and they don't care about the surf wax remover? Why would I focus on both of those in my picture right now, right? I'm gonna let Amazon tell me what I want. 21:01 S1: If you're on a princess dress... And let's say you have the choice between a Sophia princess dress, the Elsa princess dress, or a pink blue, right? All these different choices... Why would you spend time worrying about your picture when you don't even know color they're looking for, or what type they're looking for, or what people click on, when they come to your listing? Okay, description. We had our descriptions on our templates. You would just copy and paste the product description, key product features. And from there... Like I said, there's entire choruses on how to optimize these two things. The funny thing is, these [chuckle] right now, don't need to be optimized, 'cause you don't know what you're optimizing them for. So, just get some fillers in there. It's totally cool. 21:53 S1: Next, your keywords, okay? Right here, this is what matters, these search terms right here. Okay? I am saying, "Hold off on this right now." Do you know why? Because you don't know what people are searching for. That's what we're gonna discover. Okay, so hold off on this right now, because we are going to find an amazing, an amazing, amazing search terms to put on the back end. And that's it, guys. That will complete your first product. So, let's go ahead and do just a quick overview, okay. So, on the vital info side, just make sure you do the... It'll be... All this stuff will have red asterisks around them that you have to do, okay? So, product name, manufacturer, this is a random manufacturer part number. Just don't get hung up on any part of this, just push through. Next, will be your offer page, new... We like to do the sale price. We got our price from a blended average on Amazon. If you want quick data, you can do it "merchant fulfilled." I actually recommend sending in via FBA to collect your data, but I am good with either. 23:06 S1: Next, put up some basic image, just so that you can start collecting the data. Your data will not run, obviously, unless you have an image. Description, we grab from our template. Do not major in the minors on these. Just put some basic stuff up there, so that you can start collecting data. And then hold off on your search terms. We're gonna wait till we have all of our data. Guys, that is it for your basic, your first product listing. It's very counter to what a lot of people teach, because right now, we're still not at a point where our data is collecting. We're about to get there, okay? We're about to get to the pinnacle point where we set up our nets to collect all the data that Amazon wants to tell us on what people are searching for, and whether or not we have a winning product. All right, guys. We will talk soon. 11/12/15 Page 6 of 6