Expand Overseas in 2020, Hacks And Insights with Jana Krekic

This week’s show is a cool one we are going to talk about expanding globally, hacks and insights from all these different marketplaces. Our podcast guest is actually one of the speakers at the CrossBorder Summit, Jana Krekic who is an amazing woman – entrepreneur, business owner and world traveller. And since she’s working with marketplaces and Amazon all around the world in different languages we had this world discussion about some of the ins and outs as well as what she has seen and experience with her clients and hopefully you can learn some insights or at least point you to the right direction if you are wanting to open a new marketplace.

√ Jana Krekic’s VIP Expert Page
√ Yana’s company – YLT Translations
√ Dutch ecommerce marketplace – Bol.com
√ Cross Border Summit

Awesome! It’s been great to have you on the show, Jana. It’s been great to get to know you these past couple of months and I look forward to more things we do together and thanks for sharing with our listeners today.

As mentioned earlier, we’ll have the 5th Annual Cross Border Summit 2020 in Chiang Mai, Thailand, November 19-20, 2020. It will be two full days of speakers and networking and amazing, amazing time together to connect with others in our amazing community.

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gfa287

[00:00:00] Episode 287 of Global from Asia. Expanding globally hacks and insights from all these different marketplaces. Rock your 2020. Welcome to the Global from Asia podcast, where the daunting process of running an international business is broken down into straight up actionable advice. And now your host, Michael Michelini.

[00:00:27] So, I got in trouble by my wife. We’re freezing cold here in Shenyang, China North Northeast China or dong Bay or Bay dong, literal translation East North of China and hope everybody had an amazing holidays. It is getting into January or is January already, and this is the first podcast of the year.

[00:00:49] So I got in trouble with my wife. I took the kids Miles and Maggie to the local mall here. We had to bundle up. It’s like across the street, literally  But uh, you know, there’s the gate and then you cross the road and you got to go inside the mall and there’s like four doorways of like different levels of entry.

[00:01:10] to keep you warm. So it keeps going. Well, you open one gate and then there’s sliding doors and then there’s these plastic heavy things and the cloth heavy things. Hard to explain. So I took the kids there and we all bundled up, or Wendy and uh, aunts and uncles all bundled them up when it was just me and the kids coming back.

[00:01:32] Maggie didn’t want to put her like third pair of pants on and it’s like, kind of like a. Ski pants, puffy ski pants. So, you know, I stuff it in my jacket. And, uh, we walked back home, you know, we had the hoodies and the coats and the sweaters and the gloves, and, but she didn’t have her on her third set of pants on.

[00:01:52] So I get back to the, uh, one of our houses, family houses here in, in Shenyang, and my wife’s like, where’s your pants? Where’s her pants? I’m like. She didn’t want to wear them, you know, we just literally can see the mall across the street of like, it’s like just there. She’s like, she is going to get sick, and she’s gonna catch a cold now.

[00:02:15] And I’m like, alright. Anyway. Part of life here. Anyways, I thought I fit in a little bit of a fun story. Also, we are locking in the dates for the Cross Border Summit, 5th Annual 2020 going way deep into November. It’s going to be outside of China, it’s in, Chiang Mai, Thailand. November 19th and 20th. Save the dates.

[00:02:37] Um, if you’re on an email list, you’ll get more updates, and if you’re a member of GFA VIP, you’ll get even more updates. But save the date for now. We’ll let you know once things get more confirmed, but it’ll be after the trade shows and all that stuff. And we’re getting things lined up now with amazing speakers and sponsors.

[00:02:56] If you’re interested or want to get on our waiting list, CrossborderSummit.com/thailand. All right, so this week’s show was a cool one, actually speaking of the summit, she was the, she was speaker there. Jana, she’s an amazing woman and entrepreneur, business owner and world traveler that’s working with marketplaces and Amazon all around the world in different languages.

[00:03:17] And we kind of had this around the world discussion talking about. Well, you know, some of the ins and outs, what she’s seen with her clients and working and, and, uh, hopefully you can learn from this and hopefully maybe you even open a new marketplace or at least make steps  towards it is a new decade.

[00:03:31] All, you know, not just a new year. It’s a new decade, 2020s. Let’s tune in episode 287. Do you need content for your online business? We are partners at contentinvestments.com it’s an agency to help you write content, blogs, podcasts, and other types of interactive content for your business as we all need.

[00:03:52] It’s almost like cash currency. Check it out at wwwdotcontentinvestments.com. Some of our listeners are enjoying it. No. All right. Thank you everybody tuning into another G;obal From Asia podcast. This will, we’re doing this in December, but I think this’ll be our first one for 2020 and I’m excited for that. We have with us Jana  Krekic from YLT Translations

[00:04:18] Thanks so much for coming on Jana. Hey, Michael, thank you so much for having me today. Hey guys. Um, hopefully you guys are doing great in the new years. Uh, it’s a first start and I think everybody loves January as a moment to, you know, get into their future endeavors and get ready to log into products and get ready to do new things in their life.

[00:04:40] Exactly. It’s a fresh start, you know, I guess people go to the gym probably after the all the food from, from December, but they also should maybe do some listening to this show. And I’m excited. I mean, you’re, you also shared in the Cross Border Summit and you were hanging out in China and also in Hong Kong.

[00:05:01] We spent a lot of time. Hanging out and it was nice. And it’s a pleasure to have you on today. There’s so much, especially American sellers, but people all around the world actually for our show, people say they like a little from Asia a lot because it’s not US centric. So I think today’s show, today’s content will be, um, helpful for them.

[00:05:22] You, you help with, of course, translation, localization. And, uh, do you want to give us a little bit about your background before we get into the topic? Sure. So, um, I’ve been in e-commerce for a long time. Um, I was working in one of the biggest, uh, e-commerce in Denmark, um, for about eight years. I was, uh, I was a CEO with a company and they were selling about a hundred thousand products on Amazon.

[00:05:49] And this was about 10 years ago. And when I first got interested in Amazon and I was leading the whole team, and basically we tried so many different things. And then I decided to quit my job about like three years ago and I’m a translator myself, uh, I studied, um, Dravidian and Danish and German, a university, and I’ve always wanted to

[00:06:09] Just started my own thing and I decided that the translation agency was basically something I have a lot of passion for. And I also love e-commerce. So I first started doing the eCommerce translations, and then I just, after like a year, I decided to niche down to Amazon because I saw that, you know, um, a lot of people struggle with.

[00:06:29] Translate it into listings the right way with the keyword research. I don’t know what it means. They just Google translate everything and I just saw the potential and actually, you know, helping people increase their profit and it doesn’t have to be such a nightmare. Um, everybody thinks it is. And now today, like we are, we have, um.

[00:06:47] 42 team members, full time team members, and uh, you know, we’re just expanding it to all other European markets that are gonna open soon. So we do basically everything, uh, when it comes to all your appear markets, uh, Japanese and Mexican market. Yeah, it is. It’s really exciting. And one, one little tidbit that you told me before that I think listeners might be first time hearing is the Dutch market.

[00:07:17] Yeah, exactly. So, uh, it’s an information that we got that, uh, the Dutch market. So Amazon is going to enter the Dutch market, uh, in January 2020. So should be any time now. And, um, ever since November, we’ve been getting a lot of, uh, inquiries from sellers say that they want to start with listings. They want to start with products for the Dutch market.

[00:07:40] That was beginning of November. And I think so far we’ve done about. 80 98 cents  but people really want to like translate all of their products. They just want to go like, let’s do it, let’s do the Dutch market. And I was honestly really surprised cause I mean, I’m pretty sure people know about ball, like on the Dutch market, which is the biggest marketplace over there.

[00:08:01] But there’s still a lot of people obviously, that are interested in selling on Amazon, that market. Yeah, I mean. We were chatting. I mean, I know some Dutch that they were kind of always chuckling a little bit at some events that I’ve talked to, and they’re like, Oh, we’re safe in Netherlands or for some reason, Amazon’s not in the Netherlands yet, but I guess nobody is safe from Amazon.

[00:08:24] So basically that’s huge news. I mean, and then Dutch.  Dutch is a very interesting language. I have Dutch friends. I met a bunch in China and. It’s almost a, here’s a, here was here, like an English word pop out in a sentence when they’re talking. And I’m like, huh, I know, right? Sometimes it’s like, did you just, you know, uh, say something in English?

[00:08:47] Yeah. The, the problem, the only problem for the Dutch market, um, it’s also like for the Japanese market. You don’t unfortunately have any tools that provide keyword research. So for the time being, uh, maybe they will introduce Dutch language on like different tools, but for the time being, you cannot do any decent keyword research.

[00:09:07] You can just see what your competitors are doing, but they also don’t have any keyword research done for Amazon. Um, the only thing you can basically do is like, go to, I don’t know, keyword planner. I mean, that’s the close as you get to doing a keyword research, and then you’re just going to hope to get to find something which could be used for your product.

[00:09:25] So you have to do a lot of things manually. Well,  I guess what I usually say is if it’s easy, everybody is doing it, or you know, obviously the early, earlier into a new market, probably the better. So . I wonder though, maybe it’s a good discussion. How do you decide, how do you tell a seller to just  I mean, I’m sure you talk to your clients and people in the game and how do you tell them to go to Netherlands or Germany or how, how should they know which markets to even go into.

[00:09:58] Well, basically a lot of people, um, just think, do you think that this is a good idea? And then, you know, and when you are talking about Europe, if you are, let’s say a UK seller or a U S salary, I want to go to, to sell the European markets, you should always, definitely start with the German market because it’s the biggest market of all.

[00:10:16] And usually the products, which are best sellers and the U S market in the UK, they work fine. Also, the German market. And also the German market is like a, it’s like a five star market because all of the other countries which don’t have Amazon established there, they are transferred and people buy from the German Amazon.

[00:10:34] So actually you get a lot of sellers all from the whole Europe  buying from the German, Amazon. And there are a lot of countries that don’t have, um, the, this don’t have their own Amazon, uh, marketplace. Um, so you can get a lot of, um, a lot of attention and, um, you know, not necessarily that your competitors aren’t going to be as strong as on your, uh, home market.

[00:11:01] Uh, we’ve had people who were maybe the first or the second to sell, uh, some product. We’ve just recently done some, um. Uh, there’s a hint energy bars, but they were kind of like for recovery and for, there were not like regular energy bars and you could not find that on many markets, like in Europe, while as in the US there were in a, like, just.

[00:11:23] You know, a drowning in their competitors’ rage, literally. So, um, yeah. So that, that’s like a, that’s a really good, uh, option. If you want to go to pan-European. Um, if you want to do that, you should just definitely opt for the German market first. And also another tip, like the German market really loves kids products, and I’m talking about glitter face, paint, crayons, everything for toddlers.

[00:11:49] Which can be used to, to, to draw or to, you know, make some stuff like the DIY kids and stuff like that, that works insanely well on the German market. And when, you know, sometimes you just have to wait for a long time until we get some results with a lot of these products, you can just get like really good increase in sales after just, you know, a couple of weeks.

[00:12:12] Um, I’ve just recently talked to one of our clients and he was selling a product on Japanese market and usually things over there. They just go super, super slow and you have to wait for like three or four months, six months before something even happens. Cause I dunno, this is just how the,  the market is over there, I guess.

[00:12:32] Mm. All right. Mm. I’m thinking of our friend Ivan. He’s a Singaporean in Chiang Mai. I hang out with  or meetups think he, he’s saying to me and he’s said in some of our little round tables that he’s tired of the US is so difficult. He’s, he’s moving to Japan. Well. Exactly. And yeah, we actually did a private for him in Japan, and a really good thing is that PPC clicks and your cost, uh, is going to be at least 50% less than on the US market.

[00:13:09] Um, so you could be saving a serious amount of money just by doing this the same way you’re doing elsewhere. Okay. Hmm. Interesting. And Mexico is we were actually just chatting about, and you just mentioned Mexico, so it’s kind of cool, get a little bit of a taste of all these different markets, but there are some restrictions.

[00:13:34] Right? Going into Mexico, from what I understood. Yeah. But you know what the thing is that, um, I’ve just recently also found out about that. Or like when you go to the to I think it’s in beta version, or maybe they’ve just released it now. Um, when you go, like on the US listing, uh, versus your US seller.

[00:13:53] There’s going to be like a drop down menu where you can change EBC into different languages. So we don’t have to necessarily make a listing and like Spanish Mexican or something similar. And Mexico is also, of course, they, they can also order from the US. Um, uh, Amazon. And then depending on where they are, you know, uh, settings or bays like the IP address, the you, you can, they can get to see the EBC or A-plus content.

[00:14:21] They can get to see it in Spanish, Mexican. So you don’t have to do anything extra apart from just translate your A-plus content and it’s] going to switch between languages, which was not available before. And I guess obviously, you know, you didn’t mentioned Australia, but then there’s Australia. Um, of course, I guess there’s no translation cause it’s English.

[00:14:44] Or is there any differences you think? I mean, I mean, um, you know what, like, honestly, we haven’t done anything from Australia and I’ve talked to some people and I don’t know, like I haven’t met anyone who was like dying to go to the Australian market. Um, I don’t think it’s, um, I think there are like a lot of other marketplaces over there that might be interesting.

[00:15:06] But in terms of expansion, like from the US through UK, like nobody has nobody has ever done it. And also, you know, it’s English, but there’s also some sort of like, you know, localization like different words. Also, there are no keyword tools for, uh, Australia and Amazon. Um, while as you can have UK and US two different markets, English language, but they might have like different keywords, you know, like we were doing this like fanny pack, so it was like fanny pack, like in the UK where like.

[00:15:41] Quite a, like those keywords were, um, better in search volume. Then those same was in the U S market was like something else. So I think there are a lot of, um, differences when it comes to keywords and the way people are using their, uh, you know, the terms for certain stuff in Australia and compared to UK and like, you know, I don’t know if you would talk to someone from South Africa.

[00:16:05] It wasn’t completely some, it was something, a something else right. Okay. And then how about, um, middle East or the UAE? Yeah, I mean, is that he, this English though, right? I mean, I’ve heard people doing well there. I haven’t, I have, no experience there. I’m just throwing, I’m covering all the different markets I can think of.

[00:16:22] Yeah. Right. So, yeah, the, the UAE, we, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve done some, uh, inquiries and, but people wanted to have it done in Arabic, like  not in English, but I’ve seen a lot of people just doing it in English and just like leaving it as it is. Um, so yeah, I also heard people were doing well, uh, while as a Japan.

[00:16:42] Um, everybody want to do it in Japanese. Um, Japanese is a really interesting language because, um, apart from having words that you have in Japanese, you can have like English words, like you can have like English words, but they are spelled in Japanese, you know, like the word beer. They would say Beeru.

[00:17:04] Right? So that’s kind of English version on the Japanese, Japanese version of an English word. And they would use that. And then they would use their Japanese word for beer, which is, I don’t know what, but, um, and then when it comes to keywords, you can have like these English written, uh, words in Japanese, and then Japanese, Japanese words.

[00:17:24] And so you just, have think of all of the possible combinations, but I’ve  seen more English that is definitely, or the middle East, uh, Amazon. Then on the Japanese, um, Amazon. Okay. Okay. So, so people are maybe living overwhelmed, hearing just kind of went all around the world and. Would that be something you could even help people with?

[00:17:49] I mean, I’m still not sure how people should decide, even myself, you know? I think the complexity, I guess they could look at the marketplace there to supply demand, keyword research you’re mentioning. Well, I just think first like it’s, uh, it’s really important to see, like first you have to do, of course, the market research.

[00:18:08] You have to see, like if your product might be a good fit, you know, like the sports equipment is going to do well, like in Germany for instance, or UK or whenever you want to start. I think that’s the essential. And then you see, you know, like how many competitors you have. What’s your uh, PVC click rate. I mean, that’s also like something you have to consider.

[00:18:27] Cause you know, if the cost is like  more expensive here than like the US or your home market, then you know why. Why would you bother? You know, like spending so much money. Plus it’s like an other language. I just really think it’s important to do the little bit of the research. You know? It will be really cool if you find something that is not that competitive.

[00:18:46] I mean, if your product is maybe not that competitive, like these like protein bars I was talking about, and then you just decided to do it because you know, you can see that all sorts of other protein bars or energy bars are doing good. So you know, probably you, your product will, would also do well as well.

[00:19:02] You know, you just have to pay attention. Like when you’re going to international markets, that maybe if something is legal in the US it’s not legal on the German market. And we’ve had one of the clients who was selling a shampoo and this shampoo well have like some like ingredients list of the UK, but it was the general market.

[00:19:21] One of these ingredients were considered as a prescription drug and the product got banned. So you also have to pay attention to that and all of the people they want to get into supplements and food and stuff like that. And that can be very, very, very tricky. So what you want to do is like before even starting, you just want to see if like all the ingredients are allowed to be sold on that market because you don’t want to get like initial push from Amazon and then only to find out that your product is illegal basically and not to be sold like that in German market.

[00:19:54] Got it. Got it. That’s a good point too. And then I guess if you found out after , I guess you’d have to just pull, pull out of the market that product, right? Yeah, Or you’re just, I dunno, I mean. If you can maybe like, uh, remove that ingredient or you know, like German market is a little bit tricky because they really want to know what they’re buying.

[00:20:17] They really want to know. They want to have like clearly written descriptions. Everything should be in a like a, tell me what it is like black and white literally. And because also like on German market, Oh businesses  also work like that in all in Germany it’s petty much everything is clear straight forward and don’t, don’t fool me around, you know, like, and they’ll push me into buying this product.

[00:20:40] Don’t have all these like sales pitches in your listings. And the most important thing is, you know, what reflects all business culture in Germany is that Amazon Germany is actually the marketplace, which gives the most refunds, because if the, the buyer says like, ah, I want a refund, I’m not happy with this, they’re like, fine, here’s a refund.

[00:20:58] And it works  very easily because it’s like, okay, well, don’t want to find, we’ll refund the money. So there’s no like, Oh, but can you please block? You know, it’s just like, yeah, fine. We’ll refund the money. So they do a lot, a lot of refunds. Um, which is quite interesting. Interesting insights. And then there’s Dutch market.

[00:21:18] I know. What should somebody do? So would that be more position for somebody already in the European market? I mean, I’m an ignorant American. I, some people say I’m almost too hard on myself. I kind of lump Europe, you know, as a whole, but I know. There’s a, obviously, especially with this whole Brexit, honestly, I haven’t been following it.

[00:21:39] I don’t know even where it’s, yeah. Oh, it’s going to be like a, I think that they’re, um, like in 10 days or so, I forgot the date, but the, they have to, you know, made up their mind, uh, what’s going to happen. So, yeah, a lot of people are like. You know, but the thing is like whatever happens with Brexit now, all of the big companies, they  kinda already, you know, relocatable found some other, you know, like holes in the system to kind of stay there or not stay there.

[00:22:08] So I think it’s a, now it’s all about, you know, smaller businesses who are going to get affected. Cause I think that all the big, uh, companies already, you know, thought ahead and just gonna sort their, their things out. That’s always a bummer. It seems like even in the U S with the a trade war and the bad, that the small ones get hit the hardest.

[00:22:29] But of course, yeah. Unfortunately, yeah. So like going back to the Dutch market, that would be, you know, I guess through Germany, right? That’s obviously not, Yeah, Okay. So then somebody should have an account there already. I mean, do you think, obviously if you’re going into the, if you’re going into the European market, right? How many languages do you suggest somebody to start with or how many languages are there even.

[00:23:00]  Well when you entered the European market, firstly answer, but the Dutch market usually like all the requests we got were from the German clients. Um, and they want to go to the Dutch market, like not even the UK, but Germans. They really wanted to get to the, to the Dutch market. And so I think that, you know, for the Dutch market to use it, I think you should be definitely a European seller.

[00:23:22] Not like in the U S. So, you know, it’s t going to be really weird that somebody from US wants to go on the Dutch market. You know, it’s kind of doesn’t sound much sense to that. Um, uh, usually like there’s like EU five, and then they said like, you know, that Amazon is also going to start the Switzerland, Belgium, you know, there’s going to be like EU, EU six or seven, like at the beginning of the year.

[00:23:48] So they’re going to do a Swiss, uh, Belgium. And I think it’s going to be one more country. Um, I forgot what country was that I’m going to be, but they’re going to expand to, uh, two or three more markets also, uh, pretty soon. Um, so it’s going to be very busy in Europe. I think next year Amazon has wanted to do the

[00:24:11] Pan – European is going to expand to additional countries. Uh, but the most, I mean, the, the biggest markets are definitely, I mean, the UK, Germany. France, Spain, and Italy. Um, there’s also Turkish market, but I mean, I honestly don’t know anyone who’s selling on a Turkish market. Um, do you know anyone? No, I didn’t know that there is an actual, a Turkish market.

[00:24:35] Yeah. Um, so yeah, that’s, that’s, uh, that’s over there. But usually when people do go to Europe, they do the pan European, uh, thing because it’s much easier to go then later to all other um, countries, once you’re registered with a pan European, uh, system. And unfortunately a lot of people, they complain about a VAT process, which can take forever.

[00:25:00] And you really want to hire an agency that knows what they’re doing, uh, or somebody to help you out with that cause you’ll be stuck in like two years of just like a …papers you don’t understand and just going back and forth forever. And the thing for the VAT is that you have to register apart from these countries that we’re a part of pan-European.

[00:25:21] system. You also have to register in a, for instance, in Czech. So Czech Republic, like that’s like one, uh, country. And there’s also a one more country you have to register in which is outside of the pan-European deal, which is something that people don’t know. And I don’t also, I don’t also fully understand why you have to like register for VAT in some other countries like Czech Republic.

[00:25:45] Uh, that’s pretty unclear to me as well. But you know. How it all works. So it’s basically, if you’re think you’re going to register in foreign countries from the pan-European, you have to actually register in seven. So that’s why it takes such a long time. But] if you hire some like tax agency that can help you with, you can get it all done like a like six or seven months time.

[00:26:07] Okay, great info. Great info. So let’s talk about, there’s a course, obviously there’s a first. Well, there’s, I guess what you just said, like getting your taxes and your VAT set up, and then of course there’s translation or localization, right? Do you want to kind of give us some, some common mistakes clients normally work with make about.

[00:26:29] How about localization requirements or something that, yeah, I always, yeah, I always like to compare like the U S and the German market because German market is, as I said, like everybody wants to start on the German market, we’ve benn talking about Europe because it’s the biggest market and the thing is that a lot of people, they really don’t realize how that market works.

[00:26:51] Like what I mentioned for the product, you know, like you should do the, you know, market research and see if your product is going to be a good fit. You can all, you have to also have to do the market research about, you know, the audience and people and what they like and what’s their style. And a lot of people just don’t seem to pay enough attention to that.

[00:27:07] And they just going to have their listings translated from the U S like those sales pitch, you know, like this buy this adorable, cuddly furry friend or in a like, pamper yourself in luxury. And. And stuff like that. And then they push people into buying, like buy today and stuff like that. And if you just take this text like the US text, it just translated to German.

[00:27:28] It would not make any sense to [the buyers over there. It’s not going to be appealing for them to, to buy a product, you know, it’s going to just have the, the opposite effect because there’ll be just like, um, I don’t want you to tell me that your product is amazing. I will be the judge of that, you know?

[00:27:43] And they’re like, I don’t want to be pushed into buying stuff. Like I want to decide this for myself. And by the way, where’s your ingredients list? And like, I didn’t receive this very transparently, what you’re talking about. So they really want some facts. They don’t want like, you know, so much like emotional outbursts in those listings they just want to understand what they’re buying and how to use it if it’s safe for their kids and some very other important information.

[00:28:08] So same things that worked on us where, you know, probably not work for all products on the German market. For some products, like, I don’t know if you’re selling plushy toys, of course you have to be you know cute and you know, but also until, um, up to a certain extent, not in the same way we’re doing it on the US market.

[00:28:26] Cause this kinda doesn’t seem appealing to the German German [customers to, uh, just dry and, uh, have listings in that way. And also a lot of people just put all, really, really long bullet on the German market cause they’re like, I just want to, you know, use all of the 409 out of characters. But you know, it should not like write a novel in the bullet.

[00:28:48] It likes to like, you know, like two or three sentences per bullet. They’re absolutely fine. Um, uh, you just have to make a good point about your product and what it’s all about. And you just have to understand the style and the localization are everything. So you can have a really good, um, translation from us to German, but it’s a literal translation, but you have to modify the texts and the listings.

[00:29:11]In a lot of ways in order to get the best out of it. Of course, if you have a good product, it’s going to sell anyway anyhow, like if you’re have a poorly written listing, it’s still going to sell, right? But just imagine how much better you can do it if you have something localized for that market and optimize  it with the right keywords.

[00:29:31] A lot of people ask me, you know, like, okay, so like if you do the listings, how many hundred minute more sales I’m going to get? Or like what’s going to be my Uh, profit increases, you know, I mean, it’s not all a, of course, the list things. I think it can definitely, definitely help, but you also have to, you know do so many other things in a while, like, you know, PBC photography, A-plus content.

[00:29:54] Your brands. You know storytelling like so many different aspects that you have to,  uh, pay attention to. But I would say that the one thing that people oversee the most is this thing, which is called localization. To make it a sellable and to make it, um, it to adjust it. So the people in Italy or Japan or somewhere else think, that you are actually the, the, the good product for them because you can kind of, you know, you can get in their head, you know, they’d be like, this is how day thing, so this is what I’m going to serve.

[00:30:29] So to actually tell them something, which they’re used to hearing on their own market and with something, for instance, Americans have probably, I don’t know, never heard of in their life, but you just have to pay close attention to that, and that’s why, you know, it’s always good. Like if you get listings, or sorry, if you get like a.

[00:30:47] Maybe even a machine translation or somebody from fiber. If you have somebody in that country, like maybe it’s sort of aunt or somebody who’s married to somebody, blah, blah, just have them read it. And if they say like, well, this doesn’t make much sense because w don’t use this like metaphor. For this like they do it here.

[00:31:04] That’s also like a good input and you don’t have to pay money for that or anything. It’s just important for this person who lives in the country to say and feel like it’s like German or French or Spanish or it feels like it’s something weird at the text and so on. Okay. Yeah. Localization. Some for sure.

[00:31:23] People need to understand and obviously can’t make that mistake. Google translate and throw. I have to admit this to you it’s funny. Uh, I did the, my first eCommerce business was bar supplies and I did a, I did the UK and Europe. Well, UK is easier. I had .co .uk and eBay. And I also did a EU. I bought an EU.

[00:31:47] domain of this brand. And I bought a.co .uk and I just Google translated to German and, uh, I even got sales. This is like 2010 or so, 11. And,] but the hard part is, the next question is to customer service. That was, Oh yeah, how were you gonna

[00:32:08] It was a Google translate, and then Google translating back to them, it was kind of insane. I know it’s a nightmare. And when you kinda, you know, Google translate because if you do like English to German and then you cannot German to English, and then to the third language, it’s like, it doesn’t make any sense at all.

[00:32:25] And I mean, in all the Google translate has come a long way. Uh, when people used it like 10 years ago And now. But it still doesn’t understand the, the, the, the point of the context. So, you know, it can make perfect sense when you translate like one word or maybe a few words, but if you insert like a paragraph about, I dunno what it doesn’t necessarily make sense, you know.

[00:32:50] Um, so, um, yeah, it’s, it’s, I mean, of course sometimes we have to use the Google translate and of course, as I said, the product , you know, it, it, it will sell because maybe it’s a good product and maybe you just have that kind of main, uh, description of a product is good because it was a google translate, you know?

[00:33:08] But just imagine if you had key words and if your text actually made more sense, you know, it could just make things better. Definitely. Okay. And then so how do you recommend people to do customer service? I mean, work, work with the work with your agency does ongoing too, or is that separate or is that somebody else or is that somebody they should hire a internally or.

[00:33:34] A lot of people go to Amazon and you know, like whatever, it’s free and it’s coming from Amazon. It’s kinda a little bit to be suspicious about, and it actually ends up costing you more money because you know nothing from Amazon, which is like a free thing is like kind of, it was a good service according to my opinion and other people I talked to.

[00:33:55] Um, so Amazon offers that as well, but it’s all like machine translation. I mean, you can as well do like what you did. Like google translate everything and just gonna you know, do it the way you want to do it. Um, the thing for the customer service. Yeah. We offer customer service as well. Um, the thing is like, we also use like keywords all in our answers because they’re all indexed and if you want it done, like in slang and like more formally, depending on your product, we also offer that and it’s a really cool service because you do it like, you send us like, um, a question and you ask us like, how should we do it?

[00:34:30] And we do it literally in three or four hours. Tops. So it can be actually, you know, it can be replied to the customer in their, or in their own time zone in there in real time. And you know, like Amazon always says like, you know, customer service is like the most important thing ever. And I also think like working like an eCommerce .

[00:34:48] I think this is what buyers and clients really appreciate the most when you get like a really fast . response. And I just think, you know, when I answered my emails to clients and like, you know, they heard it from me like the same day, they’ll be like, wow, thank you so much for the response. You know, people are just not used to getting responses like so quickly, like within a day or two.

[00:35:09] Cause they usually are, you know, you’re used to like, you send an email to somebody and you’re like, okay, like six days later I might get an answer from this. I mean, this is what, you know what I’ve been, um. Going through with every sort of service I’ve been using. But, um, you don’t, you don’t have to hire like a professional service to answer customer service,  especially if you don’t have a lot of, uh, questions.

[00:35:32] I mean, it’s, it’s cool if you have like a pan European accounts and then you have a lot of questions because we have clients that ha would get like hundreds of hundreds of questions for all four European countries and we have a flat fee. So, you know, basically you pay once. For the whole month, and you can send us as many questions as you have, but if you have just like a few questions, you know, maybe people are asking like, um, what’s your address and stuff like that.

[00:35:59] You can totally  hire somebody on Fiverr to help you answer those questions if you don’t have. A lot of questions. If you do that, it’s much easier and more convenient to hire somebody that can help you with everything other than just like always contact through the fiverr or Upwork translator to to help you out with what did the customer say or what should we answer and stuff like that.

[00:36:20] So I don’t think, uh, if you’re a smaller, just beginning, I don’t think you should. Overspend on those things. I would always say that it’s good to hire like a regular translator because these are going to have like a decent response in this language and um, I think customers will appreciate that that it’s not like Google translate or something like that.

[00:36:42] Okay, cool. So if you don’t mind, I noticed that I hear your service put the fiverr hack, so if only get a few questions, I could go there and pay somebody. Give them the question and give me the answer then like that, like, or is it like ongoing? I have no idea. I mean, I guess, yeah, well, I think I use Fiverr for like, uh, for grab design work and stuff like that in the past.

[00:37:04] And I think you can just, uh, you know, hire somebody per project and then you can say, okay, here’s like 10 bucks for this. And then you just tell them like, look, here I have a question. Or, you know, maybe you can just write. Um, I need an ongoing project, but I think you can pay per hour and you can pay per project.

[00:37:22] So this is what you can, if you have like really super simple questions and answers and you don’t have that many  questions, and if it’s not, you know, so it’s not a big of a hassle because I think that people just kind of go crazy when they’re like, Oh, I have to go to the freelancer for one thing and then do the second one for this thing.

[00:37:41] Nobody controls them. You’d never know if it’s going to be like high quality or not. They don’t have any, you know, like a processes like how they do it or they don’t usually people from fiverr they don’t have any proof reader. They’re like a one man band. So you know, whatever the translate is, just send it to you so you can not, you know, be sure that you know it’s going to be that good while while you’re using like a professional service who has like processes, proof, proof readers and stuff like that, you know, all in one place.

[00:38:09] okay. All right. All right, y’all, it’s been, this has been a great conversation. I think we’re getting towards the, the end may well, what are some, you know, it’s 2020 people or you know. Finishing their hopefully they had a great fourth quarter as their business over there has some fun holidays and you know, now they’re going to the gym, they’re doing their new year’s resolution.

[00:38:32] Is there some new year’s resolution ideas we could do for going international? I mean, what’s some steps people could take if they’re not doing it? And maybe for US only right now. Well, I, I just, I think that people should, uh, consider, um, Europe, uh, I think people should today they should go there and check the competitors on, let’s say UK or German market check your competitors, because I don’t think.

[00:38:57] Uh, 80% of the people have done that. And I think the people could be surprised about the number of competitors they have on some other market is going to be less than in the States and might consider doing international, um, uh, shipping and just going over the seas to get some more increase in profit in sales.

[00:39:18] Because if your competitor’s doing an amazing job in the U S. Maybe you could just do it as equally as impressive in Germany or UK or Japan or in Japanese market, but you never actually, you know, uh, sat down and took a, like 30 minutes, uh, to just go, try, try to find are competitors, uh, overseas. And you might just be surprised in that.

[00:39:41] You don’t maybe even have any. Or do you maybe have only a few and that those over there, they’re doing much worse than you are, so you can just totally get ahead of your competitors. This is what I would suggest to people. Just sit on like, uh, go to amazon.de or uk and just try to find your product and see how well the competitors are performing.

[00:40:05] And maybe that’s just going to be something which can make your 2020 even better. Okay. This is awesome. Yeah. I think that’s a great actionable point for the new year. And hopefully if they ha, you know, some investments they can do for the, um, for the new year. Yeah. And we chat a little bit at the beginning, but maybe you can share again how, what you could do to help people if they, if they were interested and enjoy what we talk about today, what, what would be some things they could do to find you and.

[00:40:36] Right. So definitely we, we offer, uh, we do seven to 800 listings every month, and we’ve grown pretty big, uh, last like a year and a half. And we really offer highest quality of listings. So we do the, the listing translations to all European markets. So if you want to do one into four or five countries, we get it all covered.

[00:40:59] Our turn around time is about like four to five days, depending on how busy we are. So we do the listings with keyword research. We do helium 10. All the translators are natives doing the keyword research. And we also provide backend search terms. Um, also what I mentioned before, we also offer customer service.

[00:41:16] So if you’re a seller and you have a lot of questions that I don’t know how to handle them or you don’t have time for freelancers. We offer all of that and basically I think, I don’t think Amazon charges about like $600 per language and we charge 600 euros for four languages, so it’s a really good deal.

[00:41:34] And I think a lot of people would find it very, very useful. And you don’t have to cash out in so much money cause it’s literally one 50 euros per language per market. And I would like to offer coz it’s January and I think everybody deserves a really good fresh start. Uh, we can offer 30% on the substance, uh, customer service subscription plan.

[00:41:57] So 30% on the 600 euros for four languages, um, uh, for European markets. For anyone that wants to use us. We also do all sorts of other translations, like ads, pull up emails. Basically we cover everything, which is written in English and you wanted done in any other language, so all aspects of Um, Amazon marketplace, and we also do flat files because people always complain about how do I know what to copy paste?

[00:42:26] And we just create flat files. We can just easily upload them to our  account and you just save yourself so much time and, and tears. It is true. It’s also more scalable. We hear like Dan Fernandez, he also is shared at the cross border summit and, uh, on the show. And it’s also, you know, a good tip, I think, to have a flat file.

[00:42:48] It’s more scalable. Definitely, I mean, you can upload so many products at the same time and you really just, you know, click and upload and that’s it. And you really don’t have to even know, uh, you know, where, where is the first bullet, what is the second bullet? You know, it’s all taken care of for you. Yeah.

[00:43:08] Okay. It has been a pleasure. And then what’s the website or how can people find you. Right. So our website is YLT Translations.com and uh, you can contact us info@YLT-translations.com and if any of you have any, all of the already  translated it listings. And you’re maybe wondering like, why is this listing underperforming?

[00:43:35] Or, you know, is there something I can improve about my listing? You’re more than welcome to send us all of your listings and we can give you a feedback about, um, if it was, the listings are good enough if they’re optimize it, the language is fine. Or is there anything else you could do to make your listing even better?

[00:43:52] Awesome. All right. It’s been, yeah, it’s been great to have you on. So it’s been great to get to know your past couple of months and, uh, I look forward to more things we do together and thanks for sharing with our listeners today. Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me today. It was an absolute pleasure meeting you in China.

[00:44:08] So you were, you know, one of the top people I met in 2019 and that’s why I love all of these conferences and travel and, all the community because you never know. Who are you going to, you know, discover next, you know, as like a new person, you and your contact. And you know, I’m, I’m really happy for the whole journey last year and I’m looking forward to the new one this year.

[00:44:30] Yeah. Let’s make the most of it. Thanks. I’m really feel happy to hear that. And a me too. It’s been great to know you. Thank you so much. As mentioned in the intro, we have the cross border summit 2020 5th Annual at Chiang Mai, Thailand, November 19th and 20th 2020 and speaking MB formula that people seem to like, we’re going to have a pre event for the VIP is on a mastermind on the 18th and the 19th 20th will be two full days of speakers and networking and amazing, amazing time together to connect with others in our amazing community.

[00:45:08] If you’re interested to learn more. www.crossbordersummit.com/thailand. Thank you so much, Jana I, we, her and I met each other and first time at the site and we hung out with some of the other happenings happening at the, uh, South of China and these trade shows, seasons, hope everybody enjoyed that episode it’s a fun one.

[00:45:33] We have so many amazing shows coming up. I mean. People want to be on the show and I want to get some amazing people for you to listen to, so we got a good deal. We got a good deal. People want to come on show. I want people on the show. If a, if this show is helpful to you, it seems like the best way is sharing with a friend.

[00:45:51] Word of mouth. I think, honestly, I don’t even know how to market podcast. Never did get myself in trouble. People, sometimes came and find, actually have a  Spanish one, Spanish language one. And we also have, um, a video on I Pat Flynn, smart passive income. Of course, everybody knows him, got me all into video podcasts back in like 2015 and I did like three and a, maybe more four.

[00:46:16] But, uh, you know, audio podcasts where we’re at. But definitely tell a friend, we put amazing videos, you know, amazing content out there and try to help people totally for free. Can you believe it? Wish I had this when I was a kid. Also another little fun one alive for for.com it’s like a free tool I put together with our team over the holidays and it calculates how long you’ve been alive to the second and how long you have to live.

[00:46:44] Of course, you have to make an assumption how long you’ll live. I put 80 years old, I dunno. How old do you think you will live to? I mean, I don’t know. It’s really sad and scary, but I’ve learned that, I think it’s Tim Ferris and some other smart people, you know, have this stoic mindset where you accept your, accept who you are, accept where you are going to be, accept life and accept death.

[00:47:05] You know, I think that’s changed my life. I’m gonna change the way I think. You know, man, every single second is passing. I’m looking at this counter as I record on this audio recording software. A second gone by second, just went by a second just went by. Anyway, I’ll try to get the blah, blah, blah sessions going again.

[00:47:28] But honestly, maybe I’ll stick this one in for a few minutes. Talk about my UK and German experience before Amazon. This is like Andrew, my business partner on the New York bar store website. We, uh, basically, um, had no idea what we were doing and just found a fulfillment center in UK and started selling stuff on eBay in the UK.

[00:47:50] And I don’t know if I said any interview or not, but I got destroyed seriously cause we had an integration issue of the shopping cart. It was.co.uk and we had.eu and uh, some, some European characters are crazy with like the score a circle, small circle on top of the U  or something. I think a Swedish name and a warehouse software didn’t connect.

[00:48:13] And we were, you know, automate your business, automate your eCommerce. And man tech crushed us because that system just blocked. It was like, it just held up every order after it. So we had like, it was like a, I think it started in December 12th 14th 15th in late 2010 and It was just piling up orders and none of them were shipping.

[00:48:40] And nobody noticed cause I was automating everything. And we’re doing the US to UK, Europe. But uh and the technology companies like, oops, sorry. But it’s, you know, it’s your risk. It’s your, it’s, it’s your risk. So not our problem, you know, we’ll fix that bug then we were..we were getting like rained on angry customers like two or three days before Christmas when we figured out, I mean, we spent money like crazy sending it, but we got negative feedback, bombed or pissed off people.

[00:49:12] But, uh. I think that’s part of the game. You know, going in the game, being a gladiator, actually, I’m still getting great feedback on Amazon for our eCommerce gladiator.com our book that we wrote, I sent to another copy out to some people. We are trying to mail out some, maybe I’ll put a way to actually have people buy the print version.

[00:49:32] I’m taking some to the Philippines, but you know, it’s the gladiator man going into all these markets, like Jana was talking about each market is, is maybe it’s easier with Amazon now, but still, you got taxes, you got languages, you got a, you know, probably have somebody take you to make sure the orders are going through and make sure the inventory is going well.

[00:49:52] It’s, it’s, it’s a really a lot. So I hope that this is a helpful to you, these shows, but, uh, just take action, man to do it. And, uh. Well, have systems in place, fall backs, daily checkups on orders, customer service, and uh, but don’t just listen to do. And I’d love to hopefully have some of you on this show.

[00:50:15] I’ve had some listeners on the show in the past, so maybe it could be you, but, uh, you’ll only get there if you take action, even if you are making a mistake. If you, Oh, you gotta learn from it and improve, but it’s way better than not taking action. So please do it. Alright. Back to Shenyang life. Cold. See you next week.

[00:50:40] I’ll be in Manila soon, but, uh, still be here next week. 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.