Amazon Associates Marrying An FBA Business with Matt Diggity

Today we have Matt Diggity, the king of SEO – running a conference – SEO conference, and building empires. I am excited to have him with us today on Global From Asia’s podcast!

√ Matt’s VIP Experts Page
√ Matt’s SEO agency
√ The Search Initiative
√ Authority builders – link building
√ Chiangmai SEO conference – his SEO conference in November in Chiang Mai, Thailand

All right, Matt. This has been this has been fascinating. Three months to go until cross-border Summit our fourth annual this year 2019, October 22nd and 23rd this time in Guangzhou China right near the Canton Fair.

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gfa263

Episode 263 Global from Asia Amazon Associates and Amazon FBA. Let’s go. Welcome to the Global From Asia podcast where a daunting process of running an international business is broken down into straight-up actionable advice. And now your host Michael Michelini. How is everybody doing? I’m back in Chiang Mai. In an interview, my son and my daughter jump in and want to ask questions too. Just one of the beautiful things about working online.

[00:00:35] I took over my daughter’s room to turn it into a studio. So I guess you can come in here, whenever she wants. They’ll probably be better business people than I will, that’s for sure, almost. So we are here in the middle of July getting towards the end and Maggie’s here, Maggie. You want to say blah blah blah.

[00:00:58]Say blah blah blah? blah blah blah. Okay. Thank you. Can I catch you later? Okay, Maggie?

[00:01:09]oh she gave  you your cat great. You love this cat huh. Great. Okay, Daddy needs to do some work, okay? Is this work? I don’t know. Maybe it’s work. Well that just ate up a bunch of time in our intro. I try to keep the intro short. I don’t want to bore you to death. We got whatever the blah blah, blah section after is where I maybe talk some more about some Associates experiences and replies that I was getting.

[00:01:37]But today w e got a really nice guest Matt Diggity. He’s an SEO expert based in Chiang Mai and runs a pretty awesome conference in November. That you should check out if possible and we have a pretty interesting conversation. It’s I had an interview outline, but I kind of went off topic a little bit but we’re bouncing back and forth between Amazon, you know being a seller or FBA seller or you know product based brand owner and an Amazon Associates or Affiliates in general.

[00:02:06]He’s an affiliate expert, an SEO expert and we are kind of given into the mindset and I learned some things. I thought it was harder to get these Affiliates but seems like it’s just a matter of getting through to them. So we have some fun conversations and after in our blah blah blah section, I will share some updates about what I’ve felt through reaching out to some of Affiliates.

[00:02:33] All right, here we go. Let’s go into interview episode 263 as always we have our links and show notes at globalfromasia.com/episode 263. Making payments in Asia and looking for a good friend to work with? I’m proud to say, goremit.hk is one of our long-term sponsors here at Global From Asia and they’re your cross-border payments solution for your Hong Kong bank to pay to all around different parts of Asia.

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[00:03:21] help you. So, if you’d like to learn more then check them out and apply for free at www.goremit.hk. Thanks again for sponsoring and now I’d love it if you support them. Cheers.  Okay, thank you everybody for tuning in the Global From Asia show. This one’s this one’s going to be a fun one.

[00:03:39] We’re just prepping a little bit, Matt Diggity. Thanks for coming on the show today. He’s an SEO expert and I’ve been following you from a distance over the years. So it’s great to have you on the show today, Matt. The pleasure’s mine Michael. Thanks for having me. Yeah, so there’s so much we could talk about where you know, of course, you’re in Asia, you’re in Thailand, you’re doing online business.

[00:04:04]You know, how is how’s life? How’s life in general? Man, no complaints like I, I got to Thailand about 6 years ago and never really fell out of love with it. Man, I I mean, I’m an American I’m from California. And California, especially San Diego, where is, where is that is not a bad place to live at all – like perfect weather and that kind of stuff. But something about the Asia lifestyle.

[00:04:28] Really struck a chord with me and you know, I’m all in now. Like I’m married. I’m building a house. Whoa. The first floor is done. Like I’m in. Wow, there you go, man. That’s commitment. That’s awesome. Yeah. I mean, I’m in the married club now. Kids too. It’s so, let’s well, well. I can eat chips on the kids thing man.

[00:04:50]Take your Time, take your time. But but yeah like San Diego I do. Small facts some listeners might know about me but I lived in Ocean Beach for about barely six months. And I’m kind of between New York and China. So I it was a really cool, fish tacos and California Burrito, is man that, that was that was a good life that. I think people. That’s the thing.

[00:05:17] I miss the most the Mexican food. Yeah. That was awesome. You can try as hard as you can to get it right, but you know, there’s nothing better than literally Mexico and California when it comes to that. Oh, it’s those french fries inside. The I think it’s a California Burrito right has like greasy fries in the middle of a burrito.

[00:05:36] It’s like amazing. I don’t even know where else to get that. Cool. So, you know, we’re talking. I know some of our listeners are in the e-commerce game and Amazon game and you know, I think we could talk about maybe your your you know. It is Amazon and next 5 years, 10 years. Are you, I know I think you even said in an email you’re staying away from Associates and stuff like that personally. But I’ve been talking people I think is there any way to, is this the Amazon train is still

[00:06:06]It’s still the future of e-commerce, you say or what do you think? Well, let’s see. So, I mean a hundred percent like I’m a search engine optimization specialist and I specifically specialize in film websites. So the Amazon component of that is Amazon Associates like you alluded to and the reason why I’m not that big of a fan of Amazon Associates is because in the lifetime of since I’ve been sending them leads and sending them traffic.

[00:06:35]Things have not gotten better for me. They’ve gotten worse. They, commissions in half. They went on a spree for a long time when they were just ban hammering accounts. Like you have a pretty broad in weird terms of service and they were just taking accounts left and right. Amazon literally still has over 200,000 dollars of mine in unpaid commissions that I’ve never fought back.

[00:07:01] So yeah, I mean obviously I’m not that big of a fan of Amazon Associates, but I’d say things for Affiliates have improved a little bit. They haven’t been as nuts about their account banning. And, I think now that they give warnings which is something unheard of before. Before they just ban you and they won’t even tell you why and then you would just like screwed forever.

[00:07:22] Yeah, I got, I got banned what way back and it was funny actually a quick story. But this is it back in the day. I got banned because they said I did click fraud on my own ads like someday I spiked up my income and then I said I didn’t do it. I didn’t, why would I, I’m not stupid. I didn’t, you know is like normally it was a very small amount. But it obviously is a spike one day so they said I did that and I said no I didn’t do that.

[00:07:49] Alright, obviously didn’t reply so I wrote a letter and I made a PEF and I sent it to them and I said if you keep me account, my account banned, I will click fraud all of my competitors. I will set up different IPs VPS, VPNs. I will have pay people around the world to click fraud everywhere and you can just shut everybody down.

[00:08:08] You know what it is. They reactivated my account. Wow. Yeah, I felt like, I feel a little small wind. But they, they took that money out because I said just take the money, just take that money you say is not, it’s fraudulent and take it. But what are you doing to ban my account? Like just take the money out, you know, like anyway.

[00:08:28]Yeah, this is scary. I mean. That’s actually Adsense excuse me, that was Adsense. Again think that was Adsense. But these guys, you know, there’s so many people afraid of these these Gods, you know, Amazon and Google just shutting down our accounts, you know, it’s just so paranoid. I think most of our listeners are on the FBA side rather than the associate side.

[00:08:50] Of course, we probably have some people in the affiliate game listening but a lot of our our audiences sellers brand builders, so I think. The idea here is you know, sometimes we’ve had guests talk about I’ve talked about it too is sometimes you try to email these associates guys and get them to like add you to their top 10, you know, they you know, like guys like you rank in Google and their Associates guys, and they have their top 10 best.

[00:09:16] You know products in this category and obviously they’re making their Associates income and we’re always trying to squeeze into there. But I was thinking today we can even talk about you know, buying out one of those guys and being being on a both sides is. I think that’s little bit gray, we’ve said in a, we were talking in an email. It’s gray or black but it’s sometimes may be easier than trying to convince.

[00:09:40]I don’t know I mean and maybe you can also get some strategy how to cook how to get a reaction because I know a lot of listeners and me myself to we try to get get these associates guys to respond to our e-mail to add our product to their top 10 or you know, and maybe make it 11 or something. You know that I think that’s the game a lot of us try to do is get on to these.

[00:10:00] Associate sites because you know as FBA sellers we only have so much time in a day. So they’re mostly busy with product development, you know, Logistics not getting their account banned. So that’s think that’s kind of the idea of today’s show and you know, I have a rough outline we’ve been talking about but is it easier just to buy them out and take over or is it some kind of way to get these Affiliates to give us some love as sellers fba?

[00:10:29] So from my  perspective and I think this is probably pretty useful because like I know from my point of view. Anything better than Amazon is preferred. Right? So like Amazon is the smallest commission rate you can find so if I can work directly with the manufacturer of this protein powder or this pre workout or this chair that I’m selling like good like that’s going to be better no matter what so I want to do this and I’m actively going out all the time trying to replace people in my top five list.

[00:11:02] And you know trying to find the right JV partner trying to like, you know, like talk to these guys if I got someone number one that’s selling great on Amazon. I’m going to reach out to them one-on-one and try to get that happening automatically. So in my mind in my history too like we’ve had sites that they were making I don’t know probably $500 a month.

[00:11:23]And then once we started to work with, you know, the person produced this supplement and came online. They they put it on Amazon. They were also selling it through their e-commerce store and making a solid commission like we turn that $500 a month site to $12,000 a month site and flipped it for six figures.

[00:11:43] Like that’s the perfect situation for me and I will do that all day long the fact that you’re not getting through to these guys simply suggest to me that you’re just simply not getting through to them period. You’re not getting in their inbox because most affiliate set up their websites with fake personas.

[00:12:02] Like then I’m not gonna like go build 15 affiliate websites that I’ll have my name on it, you know, like people will reverse engineering, the SEOs are nasty like kind of stuff so. It’s pretty hard to reach me through there. So that’s the challenge. Like how do you get through to these guys?

[00:12:20] Sometimes like the contact forms you like a forwarding capability to get the? Yeah, most of the time they’re just blank like they’re not going to do anything. Like that’s the whole idea behind affiliate marketing. Like you said it forget it, make passive income. So that’s the challenge like.

[00:12:41] What I’d probably recommend is not going the direct route of like find these affiliate sites, but jumping into Facebook groups for SEO or maybe on Reddit too and just saying like hey, I got this product CBD, whatever. Anyone in that Niche do you want to work direct instead of going Amazon or that kind of that kind of stuff?

[00:13:01]So that’s I  think that would highly shortcut your process and like I’m telling you dude like this is what every affiliate wants like this not a hard sell. You just need to get to these people. Makes sense. Yeah, I think a lot of times their emails don’t work. Although I have gotten some replies personally and I think others I’ve talked to two they’re building up there today actually want to launch their own brand.

[00:13:22] So like I do some coffee accessories and I’m trying to get like these coffee product bloggers to to add me and then they’ll just straight up say, Sorry, I’m actually working on my own brand. And, I’m not like adding a new, new products right now. Like I have one guy actually kind of say that to me directly in email.

[00:13:41] And so I mean that also sparks the interest, you know, it’s and I think is Empire Flippers has talked about it, you know, there’s there’s people that buy an associate site and then launch a private label it just redirect at to their own Brands to make Radley said these small eight percent commission.

[00:13:59] I say eight or I don’t even know what those Associates, you know if you, if you’re lucky so that’s you know, I that’s what I mean. I think people at least this I’m interested in doing that. You know, I think I’m a big believer in building a long-term brand right? Like of course, that’s that’s the hardest thing.

[00:14:19] It’s the biggest challenge but I think that would be the goal. So I just wonder you know, do you do this on your own brand or website like said protein powder. I should probably also set up a separate site as like, looks like an associate site and then I have my brand site. I don’t know if you follow what I’m saying, but I guess you make like these different websites what should people do if they want to kind of get exposure to to?

[00:14:47] So so so let me just rewind back a little bit to address something. That’s like super important like it’s about networking. It’s about finding these Affiliates outside the box like you mentioned like coffee like you have coffee products great. I know I have a buddy who runs one of the like highest authority a coffee sites on the web.

[00:15:05] So like let me just introduce you after that. But, we could we didn’t have to do this podcast to do that. Like we could definitely, you could have jumped him on the Facebook groups and found that instantly. Like, so check out like I have a Facebook group called the Lab, tons of Affiliates in there.

[00:15:20] There’s another one called proper SEO group and yeah jump in there and just that’s all you got to say like I sell coffee products. You’re probably on Amazon. Let’s work out a deal done. Like nice. Okay, so to your question about like, you know, how. How to how to integrate eCommerce with affiliate marketing that kind of stuff like. This is something I’m also on defense on to right. I have authority sites and you know, we’re giving commissions to other people but is it possible for me to get a bigger piece of the pie whether it be like, okay instead.

[00:15:58] You know recommending people to a third web the second website that has my protein powder in the different brand that I started. Maybe just also doing it on the website itself, the affiliate website itself. Instead of you know, like clicking all site for that number one protein powder link. It’s going to be just going to the store right?

[00:16:19] I don’t think it really matters in some sense. It’s probably better for conversion if you’re sending them to another site because it seems like I’m a third party guy reviewing a product. Here’s my unbiased opinion and here’s a link to where you buy this person’s product rather than sending them to your own site.

[00:16:36] So that’s there’s that, right. I don’t touch it, right. So I don’t touch it because I know SEO is so challenging and so evolving that if I get into eCommerce, I’m probably going to fall off my horse on the SEO side. They’re on, they’re beasts in itself. So always looking for JV partners, that kind of stuff though.

[00:16:57]So so what  does someone do if they’re in the e-commerce game they want to get into this and like have another stream of organic, you know organic traffic coming to their site. You can always try to rank your own website. And those are for e-commerce type keyword. Let’s just use let’s just use I don’t know vaping so vape pens or something like that.

[00:17:18] Let’s say you’re an e-commerce store. You’re going to want to rank for keywords, like vape pen, buy vape pen, buy 58 flavors, like all that kind of stuff. These are like bottom of the funnel keywords where people are like really, really anxious to buy. So that’s the kind of keywords you want to rank your eCommerce site for. That said, you know, like that’s pretty challenging but that’s like the bottom of the funnel that’s where the money is.

[00:17:41] So you’re up against all the other vape store, stores and all that kind of stuff. So you might want to go up the funnel a little bit and you get into the affiliate game. This is where you’re looking at recommendations. So you’re looking for keywords, like best vape pen or vape pen reviews or the review of the x mark 50,000 vape pens,that kind of stuff.

[00:18:01] So that’s like the affiliate realm and typically your eCommerce websites and your affiliate websites don’t rank those keywords. They don’t intermingle like they rank for different keywords. They rank for different intents. So, how do you get in that game? You can start those websites from scratch. Or like you’re alluding to you can buy them on Empire Flippers or whatever. So terms of legality of it like

[00:18:25]I think in terms of you know, like it’s obviously possible to do that to like write in a have an affiliate site that recommends your own stuff and pretending like it’s a third-party review. Is that legally okay? Like and by US law, I’m not sure I’m not sure but I think it’s not. Like I’m pretty sure it’s. But people do it all the time like all the time and you know, like in terms of.

[00:18:53] If you were doing on Amazon send in to your Amazon store cloak the crap out of yourself, like that’s you’re not that’s not the same Associates account sending to the same FBA account. Like I’ve pretty sure you’re going to get smoked in just a matter of time. Agree. Yeah. We we talked at the beginning of the show about you know, the ban hammer and.

[00:19:13]They’re always looking for some excuse. I definitely think in the TOS, terms of service. Like I’m even paranoid, you know, we got some Kindle books and I’m even paranoid to use like Associates link to my own Kindle book. I think that’s even I know some people try to do that for tracking, you know, because you can’t really track conversions, but it’s something too risky for me.

[00:19:32] So I just do the naked link, you know to the Amazon. But right we’ll check this one out like my buddy right here. My buddy’s got one of the most legit affiliate websites ever. He’s the kind of guy who will actually buy the products have him shipped to his house and review them literally. He’s not just going to like write some fluff review content about it.

[00:19:54] So he’s like a real true reviewer, like a real review website. So he bought like 10 vacuum cleaners one day to have them ship to house and they banned his account. They thought like what’s going on here, you know like this. It wasn’t even with his own affiliate cookie. It was to separate the same login, right the same Amazon affiliate account login that and then they’re shopping login, but then they connected the two and band Him eventually.

[00:20:21] He got released but like that’s that’s the degree of ridiculousness we can sometimes be talking about. Yeah, so it’s it’s definitely something to, to keep in mind when you’re you’re doing all this so what you know you were you kind of talked about it a little bit already. But so we have a lot of listeners.

[00:20:42]You actually have to have a brand website to register brand registry now 2.0 and Amazon to have some unlock features. You know like video on your listing Etc. So, you know, you have to have a website also for trademarks and things like that. But then are you actually putting, you don’t put these reviews and is kind of tutorials on that brand website.

[00:21:05] I know some  people say they stay do that. You know, they want to have this kind of like educational content. But some people want to be like a pure play. And then, there’s like the Gary Vee, you know Wine Library or he says the me- the emergence of media sites and e-commerce or Commerce sites. He coming together, right like, you know, even see some news with I saw a Fox Nation they have like a store now for the fans and Fox News can buy their own.

[00:21:35]Cups or whatever, but I just wonder what should people I know people always ask me. Should I make a third-party blog? You know, that’s not my website that’s like content and I have my own brand websites. You know, I know people are always even whether we’re talking about Associates or affiliate or not just in just in general to build a build Authority.

[00:21:57]My son is in the interview now.

[00:22:04] I’m on a phone call now. Okay, thank you. Ask him his opinion. What is he here? He’ll be better than me for sure.  Okay, so you’re saying like should I build another website? I keep on my e-commerce later. I bought you know, I buy an established, or start my own, you know, I know I know people are always wondering.

[00:22:25] Okay. Thank you.

[00:22:33] All right. Sorry about. Maybe I’ll leave that leave that part in whatever man. It’s funny. It’s funny, I like it. Told you kids can change the game, man. Well, I know where I know where we’re at another question answer. So I’ll just go ahead. Basically, in the past if you asked me that question, I’d be like know, take your existing website and then add on the subsection to it and get into like whereas before you were just targeting Vape keywords buy Vapes, Vapes and stuff like that just in the same website do like best vape reviews and all that kind of stuff because.

[00:23:08] Once you start to build some Authority with an existing website, like it, it kind of keeps fueling itself. Like why would you start from scratch and building authority and trust on a new domain when you already have all this work done? Hmm nowadays things are different. So Google starting to kind of theme sites on what’s the purpose of this entire website like in usually they’re not bleeding.

[00:23:32] You don’t usually get too. Like to two themes associated with your side like I can’t be an e-commerce site in a review site at the same time. I could be one or the other.  I even see this in the affiliate game where affiliate sites are review sites. They’re reviewing vape pens, for example, and there’s a you have to keep at the right balance between review content, commercial content, review content.

[00:23:55] Best vape pen, best EJuice flavor and informational content. How to how to load your your e-cig or 15 different ways to blow smoke rings like that’s informational content and when you follow the wrong balance, then Google’s like okay. This guy isn’t a review site anymore. And then you get, your rankings can get, suff-, can suffer.

[00:24:20] Makes makes sense. I feel, I don’t follow the updates but I feel like there’s been a lot of stuff with the health industry right. I feel like Amazon want or not Amazon, Google wants traffic that has the end result. Is that right? I mean, I feel like I’ve read some news.

[00:24:41] meaning don’t they want now they actual product owner to have. Even I’m getting confused but I guess they were so they want like media sites to be media sites and products sites be products. And like you said, there’s like bottom of the funnel, top of funnel. So the bottom funnel they would put maybe the exact product page and then yeah Affiliates would be the recommendations on top of funnel.

[00:25:08] Yeah. Yeah have two different sites. Now if you want to hit both of those the really dialing that in right so like. I got nuked a couple days ago. My traffic got chopped in. I don’t know like I lost 40% of traffic. So in what I looked at the keywords that I lost it was just like these are key words.

[00:25:29] I shouldn’t have been ranking for in the first place. So like I’m a review website and where I was used to be number one for multivitamin for example that’s gone. It’s like on page 5 now, but I’m still number one for best multivitamin. So they just kind of put me in my place. You know, they just kind of said, you know, you’re a review site we gave you these rewards before but it’s time to take him away because it doesn’t make sense that you’re ranking for them.

[00:25:56] So, yeah, so yeah, you’re kind of making me think. Yeah, you had to have all these websites now and then are you know, I know there’s the PBNs and then there’s the different who is and different hosting, different IPs. So you would want to do, would are you trying to do all that or you or is it okay that you Google knows you have your media site?

[00:26:16] You’re like and your brand site. Do you want to really show the separation or is it? I mean like what you’re talking about with PVNs and who is, is just is hiding the footprint like you just don’t want it anyone whether on the back end of the front end to be able to connect that you own many sites.

[00:26:36] And you’re typically that’s something that we would look at from a backlink perspective like if you control two thousand backlinks, the two thousand websites and you point them all to one website. Like Google can see you’re manipulating them if you’re the owner all of them, but I also take it to the the money site or the the yeah, the money site level the site that makes money in.

[00:27:01] I don’t want Google or my competition to be able to reverse engineer and see that I own any sites, right? I think it’s just a smart play to do. Make sense, makes sense. So. Yes, been fascinating conversation and making you know, I’m thinking as a you know, I’m more of a I have many hats to this podcast and I’m a small seller and.

[00:27:27] been in the game for a while, but it just it just seems like I’m in groups more on the seller side and sellers are always just like how do I make more content? How do I build really build a brand how a difference if I off of FBA and in how do I really you know, so I guess you’re saying seems like the theme I’m getting from our interview is.

[00:27:49] The goal would be maybe to find JV partners and rather than trying to build your own affiliate site. Like you said in the interview or like I’m an internet marketer. I’m SEO. I’m a content guy. I don’t really want to make my own you know FB account and my own brand, so I think it’s just about synergizing right?

[00:28:06] So maybe the goal should be instead of trying to build your own affiliate site. If you’re a seller listening today, maybe hop into someone’s Facebook groups you mentioned. Will link them up on the show notes. And, find Partners. Is that that’s pretty much how it’s the main recommendation. Yeah, dude.

[00:28:24] So like as we were talking before I don’t want to jump into the e-commerce game because I know it’s a whole different world. I’m about to learn about shopping cart abandonment stuff that you know, I’ve never learned before it’s easy to you guys because he’s done it before but I’ve just never done it before and I know there’s a whole different rabbit hole to go down.

[00:28:43] Right, but the other way around like from my perspective too I’ve you know, I teach people SEL like I have a course the affiliate lab, I do coaching we do we I do it provide client SEO, so. Like I see time and time again, it’s nearly impossible to have a different job like to be a plumber, to be an e-commerce site owner to do another thing and excel at SEO.

[00:29:11] You can be okay at it. But okay doesn’t get you to number 1 on page one. Sure. To really Excel you got to be a full time SEO like you just got to be into it all the time. And that’s the name of the game. That’s why JVs are advantageous. Agreed, agreed. Then I think I think that should be what people listen to so I know I hope this I think the show will help people because I literally have seen people to just recently talking FBA groups.

[00:29:41] Just like how do I find people that are good at content creation or good online marketing or good at affiliate? I think you just got to make more of these deals. I think people got to realize in 2019, it’s not like the early days of of any of these industries we’re, were in mature phases where there’s people that are Specialists and experts.

[00:30:00]And, you know and you just got to work with those kind of people. Yeah. I mean the cool thing about like your audience is point of view in firing finding a JV Partners. Like it’s just a JV partner. It’s just someone who has an affiliate link that’s going to you. You can fire them pretty easily.

[00:30:20] And once you have your your affiliate cart set up you can use reversion in or use impact put on ClickBank let you know whatever it is. You know, like that work is probably just going to be difficult the first time and it’s not even that hard at work. I’ve helped people set it up millions of times. But so like, you know, like if it doesn’t work out that JV partner. Big deal, right it just like, okay.

[00:30:43] Sorry, it didn’t work out. Not the program anymore. Maybe maybe they aren’t that good at SEO and they never get to number one. It doesn’t matter either like you still have your product on the top of someone’s list. That’s still good thing to have. Now if you were having someone do your SEO for you like SEO is challenging, right?

[00:31:03] Like there’s people that are good at those people that suck and it’s hard to figure out who those are from the from the outside. So just looking at it from that point of view, there’s not much to lose from just trying you know. Agreed, this has been fascinating. Let’s talk a little bit about stuff you’re you’re working on.

[00:31:21] You have a pretty famous now SEO conference in Chiang Mai, which is coming up November and if you want to share a little bit about that or other other things were working on. Yeah, dude, like so Chiang Mai SEO conference, November 14th and 15th. The day before is the famous Lantern Festival in Thailand, you know those photos with like a million lanterns in the sky.

[00:31:46] Awesome. Yeah. It’s pretty cool coordination on the timing this year, but it’s good. I mean like Chiang Mai is arguably the SEO capital of the world. There’s a high level of digital entrepreneurship and on top of that like some of the best SEO’s live here. So if for the past, I don’t know. Three or four years.

[00:32:05] I was I was organizing masterminds and having to look like the world’s best SEOs to come here and we just get together, party for a little bit, Mastermind. Then three years ago we’re just kind of like, you know what this is fun for us and we’re getting so much value out of it. Let’s make a conference out of it and I’m dumb enough to think.

[00:32:22] Yeah, that’ll probably be easy.  I put that together, but it’s been a blast and in the you know, the the Thailand, the South East Asia vibe really infects everybody, you know like Thailand’s the land of smiles and and everyone sees a different way of being where, like you can smile to people and be nice. Like that’s how everyone is and it catches a hold of everybody and it’s just an amazing party and great networking and the talks are great.

[00:32:49] And it’s super fun for other people. Not me. I understand man. I’m in a similar boat. We have our, this podcast. We have cross-border Summit every, it’s fourth year in October. So little bit before yours, isn’t it’s a. For some reason I think you probably I talk to other event organizers. It’s like a huge stress, but then we keep doing it. But it’s great.

[00:33:14] I mean, it’s great. You had a lot of value, you know, today’s show is great at you got me inspired with some ideas and and definitely recommend events are a great way to especially if you’re talking about these JV deals. You know, I think if a seller went to one of your, your conferences, it would probably be over, probably the most valuable because it would meet these people that don’t have maybe products.

[00:33:34] They’re looking for more products to to be Affiliates of which will be a great chance for people. She’s all clean house. Like I said, every affiliate wants this every affiliate anything is better than Amazon. So if you’re better than Amazon meaning you have a product then yes, but in your good. Nice.

[00:33:53] All right, Matt. This has been this has been fascinating. Is there any other points you like me to to add before we wrap up and how can people find you? Yeah head on over to diggitymarketing.com. It’s like super nerdy SEO. I approached it like I did as an engineer just very, very data-oriented. So if you want to keep gout check that out, but other than that, like if you want me to do your SEO for you, I’ve the agency called the search initiative if you need something like backlinks, I have a business called Authority builders that builds backlinks Chiang Mai SEO conference.

[00:34:27] Yeah, good stuff. Thanks for having me on appreciate everything. Thanks for that. Now. Let’s talk soon about the, the connection I can give you about the coffee. Yeah, we will this was all about. All right, sounds good. Three months to go until Cross Border Summit our fourth annual this year 2019, October 22nd and 23rd this time in Guangzhou China right near the Canton Fair.

[00:34:53] It’ll be a little bit further will be a small taxi or a quick quick subway ride to downtown Guangzhou where we’re going to have two action packed full days of speakers, roundtables networking with a great group of people come from all around the world to celebrate, doing export-based e-commerce, Amazon FBA, Marketing Online and more.

[00:35:16] I’d love to meet you there and it’s definitely supports Global From Asia as well as the community. Check it out at www.crossbordersummit.com We made it its own dedicated website.  All right. I hope everybody is having a great experience after that. I was taking some notes. Maybe join some of those groups and let’s try to marry or merge these product people and affiliate people and it’s definitely. I was just in China for 10 days seeing factories and it’s I think the biggest takeaway which we mentioned was there’s people that are good at making and brands are making products. And then there’s a good people that know how to move those products or get that traffic and it’s true.

[00:36:06] I mean. The internet is evolved was at 30, 40 years old now and you got to just know what you are good at and really focus on what you’re good at.  So some of my experiences I mentioned some of them in the interview, but I met some Associates. People that would reply to me actually see, you know, I guess my name is out there a little bit.

[00:36:28] So I just use my real name. I don’t use a fake name usually get myself in trouble and I tried email with fake names because you can’t keep track of which name you are. But I just use my real name. Sometimes use a Gmail or my blog email or whatever never sure what’s the best email to use? But sometimes they’ll remember me or hear of me and they all reply and some was be honestly, they’re not sure.

[00:36:52] What’s the. What’s the most valuable thing of their time or they are working on their own Brands, you know some did work and some I’ve talked about some presentations where you get these invites to your events. You get onto the blog, get into the content, same as Global From Asia. I mean tons of people want to get on the show.

[00:37:12] They want to get a exposure. They want to share what they’re working on. So there’s, there’s all you got to kind of keep an open mind. There’s not really a formula, but I did get some rejections. It’s business development and sales. It’s getting outside of your comfort zone and putting yourself out there and maybe somebody will say no, or maybe they don’t reply but maybe these Facebook groups are good answer.

[00:37:36] I’ve already, Matt hooked me up with the coff- coffee blog Authority site. So hopefully we can get some results there for the Sisitano brand. It’s just about grinding and I don’t think there is a magic formula. But also takes a lot of time. You got to focus. I mean, it’s really really hard for me to be running an Amazon business and and this blog and we got the Cross Border Summit.

[00:38:01] I think, you know, you have to choose what you’re going to be good at and maybe that’s what we should almost. I always think about the title to show later. But you know, I think you can’t be good at everything and you have to do one thing really really well, so. Some other experiences, I’ve been overwhelmed with the podcasts.

[00:38:23] I was on the road. It’s kind of embarrassing. I think it’s similar to maybe affiliate Outreach or joint ventures, but I was I couldn’t even get on the internet and I thought it was just a regular phone call. I had brought on a team, is new and she’s helping me out with all of our inbound emails and she booked a call.

[00:38:40] It was like catch up and it was actually meant to be a podcast interview with another guest in the future and I couldn’t make it. So I was trying to email I couldn’t get a Gmail. I didn’t have my VPN, didn’t have. I need my tools. I was in the airport in Guangzhou. So I was a little thing from QQ and it would bounce I can’t. I mean seriously, China’s totally cut off but you know it is this person.

[00:39:02] This will be a guest on the show actually very influential person. They accepted the issue but I mean I couldn’t even reach them for like a day. I just had a wechat to April to try to reach this guest and I think that’s just part of it. You know, I know a lot of us. Haha love it me like to sit behind our computers and do things that you push.

[00:39:23] Button and something will happen but with humans are people whether its Affiliates or podcast guests or anything, you know, it’s going to be a little bit of a magic. It’s going to be a little bit of a not smooth process and I’ve learned that to with kids, you know you I like to kind of I’m not a programmer but you know with the tasks and with their SOPs and our processes and the team.

[00:39:49] It’s also about making things move as smooth as possible. But people get sick, people don’t understand the same way that you understand. So I think maybe somebody on your team should be the product, product person and somebody should be the people person. Or you know, the programmer whether it’s a tech startup or an e-commerce business.

[00:40:10] Somebody’s got to be the Outreach person and you can try to hire that person. Actually, literally my wife Wendy talks to a lot of people in China. And they’re asking me to help them find somebody to outreach for their e-commerce business because their English is limited. That’s definitely a big struggle.

[00:40:27] I didn’t talk about it too much with Matt on the interview, but Chinese have a huge issue trying to reach out to these influencers or Affiliates or bloggers because their English. And the trust, you know, you got to, people got to trust. So when I I’ve been just literally emailing people just as individual, you know, I and I just say I’m a.

[00:40:46] I’m a seller on Amazon and I’m a business owner and I’d love to make some kind of win-win collaboration with your website. That seems to be the better way than saying like.  You know email them from a generic email and your company with broken English saying, please promote my products, you know, I will send you a free sample.

[00:41:07] Can you give me a review? I think, that probably won’t get as good of a response rate. But even with my Native American English, Native American or English, native English English is American English accent. I also don’t get everybody responding to me but.  I don’t know. I don’t know if you guys are like this this blah blah session.

[00:41:31] I’m. But I think it’s just no magic formula, and it does take a lot of time, but also just kind of gets the word out people need to know what you do and you you need to stand behind what you’re working on. If you’re going to use like aliases and different names is going to be hard to have people know what you do and how to find you.

[00:41:50] So now I’m actually going through this process where I’m Global From Asia, and I’m also a coffee product seller, which is it’s kind of confusing. To me, at least. Maybe not to you. Do you think it’s confusing? Maybe let me know. All right, let’s wrap up. This week’s show. I’m going to go take out Spider-Man.

[00:42:06] My kid, man. Miles is just crazy about Spider-Man like I brought back a Spider-Man costume my wife bought on Taobao from China. Because Taobao has everything and he literally looks like Spider-Man mini Spider-Man. Now, the thing is like perfectly designed to look like a real Spider-Man the costume. So I’ll do a little Vlog on Mike’s blog.com if you want to check out the.

[00:42:30] Personal side we’re going to go to mall and where it’s nice and air condition because it’s pretty hot here today, and I’ll do some video footage if that sounds interesting and we’re working hard on Cross Border Summit. A lot of amazing speakers coming out. Thanks so much and have a great day and thank you for listening.

[00:42:49] Spider-Man’s coming.

[00:42:57] Oh boy. To get more info about running an international business, please visit our website at www.GlobalFromAsia.com that’s www.GlobalFromAsia.com. Also be sure to subscribe to our iTunes feed. Thanks for tuning in.