Tips Optimizing Your Amazon Seller Central with Daniel Fernandez

Today – I’m excited to uncover a hidden gem to the podcast world – Daniel Fernandez, a lover of big data, excel, and optimizing seller central – to the show. His first appearance on any podcast – which is hard for me to believe as he has been a great speaker at a few of our Global From Asia events – as well as others I have attended. Let’s tune in and hear his tips and hacks for optimizing your Amazon Seller Central account. I was taking notes and think you’ll get some nuggets in here as well.

Thank you Daniel!

√ Daniel’s consulting agency – AMZ clever
√ Daniel’s GFA VIP profile
√ GFA bootcamp sessions
√ Imgur Image hosting

Thank you Daniel! And I do appreciate the kind words you have about our GFA events. Excited to have you at our first bootcamp and thank you for sharing on the podcast.

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[00:00:00] Episode 250 of Global From Asia – Liang Pai U. 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. blah blah blah blah blah.  So the blah blah blah, I just went upstairs to do my blah blah blah.

[00:00:29] I say to my kids and they…they love blah blah blah, but not just my kids. It seems like a lot of you enjoy it. I’ve been adding the 10 minutes blah blah blah after the interviews. I don’t like to intrude take over too much on the guests interviews. But of course, I have various perspectives and things to say after each show.

[00:00:50] So I’ve been adding that. So if you like the blah blah blah blah. Well let me know and I’ve been getting overwhelming response. Thanks, Danny Sullivan, Russell Smith many others for giving positive encouragement on that segment. We will keep doing those as long as I can. So this week is a very interesting interview.

[00:01:12] It’s again a guest has been long overdue to come on the show and I was kind of shocked. This is first time to be on a podcast. I feel like I’m doing my job then I think that’s my job maybe as the host here at Global from Asia or as a podcast host to get amazing experience knowledgeable people to share.

[00:01:33] On a podcast that have not been on any other podcasts actually, I don’t know I think you know, I get a lot of different people emailing us to want to come on the show and they’ve been on a lot of other shows, you know, of course, there’s some famous people or there’s some smart people but I like this I like this kind of stuff where I find amazing people.

[00:01:52] Maybe maybe Daniel is a great. I think he’s going to know in other up-and-coming guy in the community, in the scene very talented person, so I think I’m doing my job by getting great people like this to have never been on any podcast before come on the podcast. So Daniel Fernandez, he is a data geek he is a he’s a lover of data and Excel and we talked about that and he loves Legos when he was a kid, and it’s somehow connected him to become a optimization or Seller Central experts.

[00:02:26] Which definitely is I’ve spoken at some of our amazing events at Global From Asia Cross Border Summits and Cross Border Matchmakers and he’s been very very giving and helpful with his knowledge and experience to the community and he’ll be also one of our hosts, I don’t know. I’m trying to think of the word… instructors, experts at our first-ever bootcamp, July 19, 20-21, 2019 in Chiang Mai Thailand.

[00:02:54] But you know, so I’m getting them on the show to give you guys a little taste of some of the amazing knowledge and people are going to have their but even without you making it. I think this show is going to be a good one. I was taking some notes. He’s always given amazing knowledge when he’s out on stage and his first time appearance in a podcast episode 250 of Global From Asia and we have Daniel Fernandez about..

[00:03:18] I counted four we kind of lost track. I kind of you know have different seg parts of all of it of like common mistakes or hacks or ways to optimize your Seller Central which if you are selling on Amazon you need to learn Seller Central. It’s overwhelming. I’m actually not so experienced in that we have I have people on the team to help me but I should learn more and I was taking notes.

[00:03:41] So we I count four maybe five maybe three depends what you count as a tip or mistake, but we give or Daniel gives amazing insights and then afterwards I’ll do my blah blah blah. Hopefully kids let me do it without them barging into home office studio here, but enough of this episode 250 Global from Asia Daniel Fernandez.

[00:04:05] Let’s go. Are you looking for a cross-border payments solution in Asia? I know I was and I’m lucky I found GoRemit.hk an official sponsor here at Global from Asia and I do really use them for many years. They’ve helped this show pay our amazing editors and posters and content people to get the show online and they have come through and supported us and I’d love for you to take a look at GoRemit.hk for your payments into China.

[00:04:35] To Vietnam into Philippines and Thailand, I think here go for major. We see the trend of Southeast Asia coming up and that means you’re going to have to have either more bank accounts or Bank wires or other Solutions and definitely one of them is GoRemit.hk check them out free to sign up course.

[00:04:51] There’s a kyc account opening process, but they’re a good affordable solution for you to get money to different parts of Asia from your Hong kong-based Bank. Check them out. Okay. Thank you everybody for joining us on the Global From Asia podcast. We are trying our best to internet as always in Cross Border business with these amazing interviews and guests.

[00:05:13] We have a great guest with us today. I should have had him on the show a long time ago. Actually Daniel Hernandez from AMG clever. Thanks for being here Daniel. Hey Mike, it’s a pleasure, finally get to be on your show. I’ve listened to it a long time ago. So this is this is very exciting. Awesome, happy to hear it and yeah, I mean we still say you should have been on you’ve been a great presenter at a few of our different events

[00:05:40] At the Cross Border Summit and others and you definitely been delivering amazing value. We were also had a common events where we were both speaking and and you definitely were one of the more popular presenters with your knowledge sharing and it’s just it’s just great. Also, we’re excited to have you know participate in our first goal of major boot camp and and others so I always appreciate your support here for those that don’t know you Daniel.

[00:06:08] Do you want to give a little intro? Absolutely. So, my name is Daniel Fernandez. I moved from the US in China now being here for a few years and I run a Amazon management marketing agency. And I mean I’ve been in the game for for a few years and that’s well. That’s what keeps me busy. I work with with with with Amazon sellers.

[00:06:40] They either want to Outsource their their advertising on on Amazon, you know, they find a lot of people find that it takes it takes a lot of time and they cannot do what I think every seller should be doing which is launch new SKUs grow their brand because they have to be you know on busy with the advertising.

[00:07:04] So if they want to give that to someone that can handle it at scale that’s when they they find me and also want to be some you know, some some bigger brands some maybe a brand names. We may have seen a you know in the stores that they just really want to outsource their whole Amazon channel to someone to that’s the that’s what that’s what keeps me busy.

[00:07:29] And I remember you say, you’re like an Excel deeper of data geek. I think that’s something that I would like to highlight. You know, I think you love the data, right? Is that that correct? It’s a yeah, it’s it’s a passion of mine. It kind of makes me this may sound a little may sound a little little silly, but it just reminds me of you know, when I was little I used to play a lot with Legos.

[00:07:56] So I’ve I see Excel as the Lego version for adults. Wow, and it gives me just give me a different understanding, a different insight. You know, I think you know the world we’re living now data is the new I mean the new gold right and but the challenge is to to process that day that to refine the data so you can make the next move for your business on Amazon

[00:08:25] Really they give a they give us a lot of data about our our sales our performance our inventory. There’s something they don’t give us which hopefully will change at some point. But I think is key to to know what to do with that data. Agreed. Yeah, I think I’ll be honest. I don’t know. Maybe it was I think I like Legos, but I’ll be honest.

[00:08:51] I’m not a I don’t enjoy the data. I’m more the the maybe the visual person, but I know that this definitely an advantage to long data and enjoy data. So yeah, I think you’re in the right the right the right spot for that. And and so this is cool. And then maybe a may you make me think of my kids like I do like Legos. I do think future is data for sure and we should all embrace it and then gloves that gold like mining for gold.

[00:09:25] So, how did you get into the whole Amazon game? And what’s the story? Yeah, well, let me let me tell you I was I was living in San Francisco. I had a decent job there a few years back and I just didn’t know I decided I one of the things I always wanted to do was of course to have my own business.

[00:09:50] And I failed at that job. I felt that you know each year. They would probably pay me more money. I would probably get a raise every now and then on each year would be harder to to leave the job. If you know what I’m saying. So kind of you know part with you know, what time was a great opportunity. I mean, I’m very grateful but to you know be if I thought if I was going to start a business you has to be now.

[00:10:19] When I’m you know, relatively young so I can either mean I started just like a lot of people taking some courses on how to sell on Amazon. I said you’re going to events. I think a lot of people should ready, you know look into events because there I you get you get insights from from other sellers that are not, you know things that are not mention it on courses, but that’s what I was I started doing that.

[00:10:47] Started selling a product and I might let me tell you like the very first product that I launched, you know, it was it was a hit, you know right off the get-go. I didn’t know what I was doing and guess what happened guess what happened about a month later without product. I’m thinking something with something with brands.

[00:11:14] Something maybe in like I ran out of stock man. Okay, this happens to to a lot of people.  At that time I was sourcing from from the Middle East and they had these yeah, I didn’t start sourcing from China. I started searching from from I think it was Pakistan. And what happened is they had these other their long religious holiday that last for like a month wow, and that’s all.

[00:11:44] Out of stock I couldn’t reorder for a long time. Finally. When I did reorder. Then these you know, these category had had already moved, you know, it was harder to harder to rank but you know two months later guess what happened again?  Out of stock again. So I was out of stock it was hard, you know, it was heartless to learn.

[00:12:10] So the third time around I couldn’t get it to rank. And I had put a lot of you know, a lot of a lot of effort in you know behind this I was still doing my job. But anyway, long story short, I you know, I launched other products, but at the same time from a little bit from sharing my experiences at events and conferences.

[00:12:31] That I that I joined and I did join a lot that you had to pay that they were not not cheap either. But from these places I started meeting people that wanted to actually pay me to to to help them write with with their businesses based on what I was telling I was doing so that’s how my agency was born just from.

[00:12:55] From people I met face-to-face and you know and then from there I started getting referrals and when I finally left my job I decided that you know, I need to focus on one thing. It’s either either selling the products myself or or working with with other sellers with brands with with the agency and I decided to do the second one, you know because of the

[00:13:25] Time I just started getting you know, getting more referrals were people that were interested. So you felt like the he felt like at the time it was the right move. God. and it’s been a few years and we’re still growing. I call it a MZ clever, you know, just just really really because this goes back to go back to day two to the data mentioned.

[00:13:50] I just think with data we make clever decisions. Make sense. Yeah, like thanks for sharing the story and. I think listings are up for some treats today. We’re going to be there’s so much we can of course talk about and also of course a little plug. Well, of course you have an agency people could definitely reach out to you for your services.

[00:14:11] And also we have this boot camp coming up in July. We’ll we’ll have more details about that later. But today, you know, we always want to add value on the show for listeners and we were talking about this and we’re going to talk about some of the common mistakes or maybe some I think you like the word hacks or some kind of optimization for Seller Central.

[00:14:29] And I think first just you know, I think for listeners that are selling on Amazon. I guess just learning Seller Central itself is is is critical, right? I mean, they’re its massive just just operating just the main screens. I even still haven’t figured everything out inside of it. What would you say the same or?

[00:14:53] Yeah, absolutely. So Amazon, you know for for agencies for sellers, Amazon is our business partner and you know, if we don’t know all the things that our business partner can do then I mean it’s where some of the top spot. Seller Central has so many so many dashboard so many reports you can get from and you know that there are a lot of them are at least in my operations are things I check on a daily basis.

[00:15:30] So I think the more you you learn about this this business partner the better the better you’re gonna do, you know, especially when that is readily available for you as a seller.  Got it. Got it. And just to give a few to do like a quick example is imagine, you know, you get a nice or just a decent car and he has all these you know bells and whistles.

[00:16:02] These all these buttons but just imagine somebody that doesn’t doesn’t know how to use the cruise control and they are like how much more work they have to do when driving on the highway then some of that somebody that does you know. That’s kind of the analogy. I have in mind. Okay makes sense makes sense.

[00:16:22] Yeah, so like, you know in it is your business partner and you know, sometimes they don’t seem to really notice that or care but what yeah, I mean, sometimes they don’t they don’t play the role, right? Yeah. There’s some jokes in our some of our other events and speakers and said, yeah. They are they don’t yeah, they don’t really care.

[00:16:44] But yeah, I think it’s of course you have to know the rules and know it’s overwhelming so somebody whether it’s somebody, you know find an agency like you or somebody in your company, there should be somebody that’s kind of like the master of The Seller Central because that is of course the tools and the gateway for you, too.

[00:17:03] To get that get that money. So maybe we can go into some of the what are some of the daily things you think for somebody to be that operator of The Seller Central?  Yeah. Well, I was thinking being you know, some of the main things obviously are your your sales right your revenue your unit sold. I was thinking more of kind of like common mistakes or things that people should check that, you know may not know.

[00:17:40] Are there or may not know how to find them but to go to to your question, I would say like Amazon if you go if you go to the business reports, when I download, you know, the the all my sales data my sessions my page views all that  information and I look at the the conversion rate. So here I’m and for for a lot of what I am

[00:18:09] I’m going to mention there is there is obviously, you know software tools and we can get to that later. But I want to talk specifically about the unit session percentage. So this is a lot of people call these the the conversion rate right? So you get you sell let’s say 20 units and you know those 20 units sold came after a or where the result from

[00:18:38] Let’s say, let’s say 200 200 sessions right accession is a unique visit to one of your products within a within a time frame after that time frame that shopper comes back to your listing that will count us another session but I don’t like let me tell you Mike. I don’t like the way Amazon reports this and let me tell you why I don’t like it when it’s when it’s a done by by the unit.

[00:19:12] When this this conversion rate is calculated by the unit. I prefer to to shift this space calculated by the by the order right and let me tell you why, you know, if all your customers every order you make is only one unit. Then it’s fine right? But I found that sometimes, you know customers buy more than one unit.

[00:19:39] They buy and sometimes I’d got like schools or actual business that buys from your Amazon store and they buy 50 units in one order right? So what that does is it really screws your your conversion rate if you look at it that way, you know, when they there is these these somewhat unusual unusual orders that have multiple units in them because then you’re going to look at your conversion rate.

[00:20:09] And if you look it up if you calculate it by the unit unit you would say wow I’m killing it, but in fact, you just got one order and what and that’s one order that doesn’t really come too often right so when you bring this to advertising, you could think that a key word is really killing it but in reality was just one order that maybe you know, maybe you got lucky on that.

[00:20:31] So does that make sense? Yeah, I get it. So I think that’s always the tricky part. I mean that and also some people just look at the top top line or I just see how much sales they’re making but especially in Amazon we’ve had other shows were, you know, even other channels like Shopify are shopping carts or other kills might be more

[00:20:50] lower top Line but higher-margin, right? So I think a lot of times people don’t don’t keep track of how much it’s really costing to get that Top Line. Right, right, and she shall I shall I just mentioned some other tips some other things quote-unquote common mistakes? Sure. Of course, let’s this is why I’m excited to hear even for myself.

[00:21:17] All right. So, let me see. I started you know some some of the some of the things that I would encourage every seller, you know, especially new sellers is to when you sign up onto Amazon maybe schedule just for yourself right one hour and then just go to every single spot of your Seller Central.

[00:21:43] Right that that hour alone there is going to save you a lot of I think a lot of issues in the future and also, you know, obviously time you going to know where things are at. But especially I would go to the if you look to your settings and then you go to fulfillment by Amazon settings. There’s a lot of things that by default are what I want to say more to Amazon’s benefit then then to the sellers as soon as.

[00:22:13] Set up the account, right so there’s a lot of things once you know, as soon as I start working on a new account one of the first things I do is go there and switch things around because I think I think there’s some things we may not want to do so want to be specific in that fulfillment by Amazon settings.

[00:22:33] There is one called the inbound settings, right and in there, there’s one called the inventory placement option and by default is set up and I’m going to I’m going to explain this in just a minute, but by default this piece is set up as distributed inventory. Right, and that means that every time we ship we want to make a sent a shipment to Amazon Amazon is going to distribute the warehouses that they want these to be delivered to right so that’s why I let’s say we’re sending Mike I said, well, let’s say today.

[00:23:09] We consider a factory and we order a thousand units of widget. Widget number one? Right? So Amazon he’s going to split it. So they’re going to say okay send 200 to this warehouse in North Carolina send 400 to this one, you know in New Jersey and then the remaining two this one sometimes they only do two depending on the on the amount.

[00:23:35] So a lot of times that is not cost efficient, especially if you’re shipping from China right because when you split your shipments, your shipping costs is going to get more expensive. So a lot of times she’s better to switch that setting from from that distributed inventory placement to what’s called inventory placement service and would that would what that will do is is instead of Amazon splitting to different warehouses.

[00:24:07] You just have to send it to one and then they will charge you a fee per unit is 30 to 40 cents or small items. And if you’re sending oversized items is a dollar thirty more. So it’s something you can compare with your with your shipper in terms of how will your your shipping costs change. Right, but what I’ve discovered a lot of times even after that fee I end up sending saving money and for for large sellers, you know, I guess a lot of large shows May know this already.

[00:24:45] But if you’re shipping, you know bulk of products, especially oversized these could make a big difference. Now, this is great. Thanks man one that I think of I don’t want to [00:25:00] hopefully take one that you thought of but I learned this the hard way with the coffee pots Amazon also has a default to resell returns.

[00:25:12] I guess they found yeah.  But people were buying the returned moka pots and we had like a feedback negative feedback. Somebody said had stains in the pot and were like and of course we get to the factory buy from China but still like and we had QC then we realized some of these like what about the return so it’s yeah, they default restock your returns to sell again.

[00:25:39] Which is right. We actually that that’s a default on so we turned that off after just… That one is called repackaging settings and the other one is called repackage and sellable customer returns. And and let me tell you something something scary about this one. Right since you’re right so they they.

[00:26:02] The Amazon warehouse staff will determine, you know, once they receive open box returns about of your products. They will determine if the product is still in new condition. And if they deem it in new condition, they’ll repackage it. I guess maybe tape up the box whatever they do and put it back in.

[00:26:27] and sell as new right in New Stock. And you know, obviously a lot of customers, you know, a lot of times they make mistakes. I mean more often than not they make mistakes. And then that’s a guaranteed bad review. I would say yeah crazy, but that the scary part here is turning it off is not enough, right?

[00:26:51] So if you disable it is not enough, what you want to do is you want to enable it and then uncheck all the product categories because they keep every time they add or they modify a product category I’ve seen it before that it gets you guys checked up again. And even if it’s disable this product categories are our have the.

[00:27:15] The checkup the mark-up they will still do still do this. And also there is a check box to Auto enroll or newly added category. Right? So you want to make sure that all of those are unchecked and then you can disable it again. So okay, if you haven’t done that Mike, you probably should take take a look.

[00:27:36] I know now, you’re making me think I didn’t do that. All right. It’s like I said, I mean I’m learning here. So.  Next mistake people make I’m afraid I’ll – yeah, no, of course. So here’s one that that and surprisingly I don’t know  If a lot of people know about this. So on your Seller Central row.

[00:28:04] And this might be a little bit more advanced but it’s not hard to do if you’re starting out and it’s a good practice in your Seller Central you have your inventory menu in there. There is a something called inventory reports the inventory reports menu and in here you have a lot of different reports, you know about your listings, but.

[00:28:28] but there is something there’s one report that doesn’t show up in that drop down menu. But Amazon has the the ability to enable it for you if you asked okay, so this one is called the the category listing report and what does is so what you have to do is you have to go on Seller Support. You have to ask them.

[00:28:55] Hey, can you enable the category listing report so I can download it from the inventory reports menu and why we want to do this. When you download this report, you’re basically downloading a copy of all your listings in an Excel flat file format, you know for your first of all as a backup second of all to see how Amazon is recognizing your listings.

[00:29:27] A lot of times you want to update your title and you submit the title and the title doesn’t change right? My listing still keeps displaying the old title. So with this category listing report, you can see how Amazon is what information is being recognized and most importantly from from there.

[00:29:46] You can modify these flat file to make changes to or your whole catalog in just one one step instead of having to go one product at a time in the manage inventory you can use to reduce Excel and it just makes it makes it almost it almost is the only way to do it at scale. You know, once you start having, you know a few more excuse if you just try to manage one by one is it is almost time time restrictive, you know impossible.

[00:30:20] So I understand yeah, that’s a great one. That’s a great power tip for sure. I mean I literally was in a meeting yesterday with a seller here in Chiang Mai and he’s he says he I think he needs to learn that tip because he says got like 60 or 70 excuse and he’s a totally overloaded with trying to update them all and keep them up-to-date stuff.

[00:30:40] So it sounds like well, yeah, I can’t I can’t imagine. How I mean, I used years ago. I used to do it like I start like this right the the hard way. But you know, there is a smart way. The other thing is is like you always want to keep a backup of your listings with with the image URLs, right? So what I mean with image URLs is you can upload photos to your listing.

[00:31:12] By just going one listing at a time and then you know upload it from your computer. But what I do instead is I go to somewhat it’s such as IMGUR – Imgur. Yeah, and then post image. These are these are free websites where you can you can host photos and then you get a URL. So I do that for all the every single product that I that I work on that I upload or you know, create or manage and I get all their images on these websites and then I bring those URLs to be in Excel flat file and I always keep it because a lot of times Amazon people from their catalog team will delete your photos change your photos.

[00:32:00] You may get a you may get hijacked by someone and now your photos are gone, you know and you know, some people are very good at keeping files in a computer but you know photos are heavy. If you have a lot of products, you know, you really have to be very organized but keeping an Excel with all these URLs is the same, achieves the same purpose and you don’t really have to store a lot of data on your computer.

[00:32:32] So I would say this is a great practice because once something on your listing exchange for your photos are missing it’s hard to remember how the listing was or how it looked like before right you can always keep that flat file with all versions of your titles of your bullet points etc. So you can always go back to it.

[00:32:53] Okay.  Okay. This has been amazing. I’m taking some notes and I call it Master update in this Excel file. I don’t know but yeah, yeah, I think some kind of a master list is is critical and just for the backup of the you know, like you said just a nightmare. Because yeah well I realize the Amazon is

[00:33:17] Not your it’s not yours right, it’s a channel. And yeah, I mean they they can see seems obviously with the horror stories they can change to do stuff. So with you having it all backed up should hopefully make you feel a bit better about what you’re doing. So yeah. Yeah, of course. I had some little thing here the, you know, Amazon has their seller support.

[00:33:41] But I I just don’t rely on it. I would probably rely on it, you know a tenth of you know, what I would rely on on just me and my team keeping our backups and you know having more I really like the fact of having more control. All of our products our stores everything and you know everything that can be done proactively anticipating anticipate issues with Amazon.

[00:34:14] I think it’s a better strategy, you know, you don’t want to their support is not very efficient. So the more you can do as a seller on your end to to protect your business I think is better. Exactly. So this has been a great great great one. Daniel I don’t know I think we can definitely wear pasts our list of am I had a few I think for but I don’t know.

[00:34:42] Sneak in another one or and I know you always got so much. I mean last time you always use when you speak, you know, people don’t want to stop you know, where over time a little bit but I think we could what do you think? What do you got? I can keep them coming, but I think we should save them for for Thailand.

[00:34:59] Yeah, I don’t like, you know, I don’t want to be so sneaky. But yeah, I mean this I think already the people got some amazing value on this and this has been a great one, Daniel and yeah, like you said, of course, they can come out to Thailand you have we have two different workshops for you like one at a beginner level which would be the Seller Central mastering it and really getting a full grasp.

[00:35:25] Do you want to share a little bit with some more some what you’re going to be sharing? Yes. So well, first of all, you know perhaps to you you’re putting together these these workshops in Thailand for many for sellers to take it to the next level. I’ve looked at the other speakers you going to have you’re gonna have a half a day?

[00:35:54] David and I am blanking out and some of the names. Yeah. Yeah people that are in the industry great lineup and. Yeah, so I mean I’ve met I think almost everybody there had just some blank not on the names, but I know that these people are in the game and you know, they there’s a lot of people sort, of course it but these people are actually running agencies or services that are they actually doing the work every day.

[00:36:25] Yeah, and. You know that that I think that it’s going to be it’s going to be very very valuable for the people that attend in terms of what I’m going what I’m going to talk about. I am going to have I’m going to have a workshop cater to people that are you know, people that are starting out or would consider themselves just as you know intermediate or beginner.

[00:36:51] I’m going to go for things that can. Similar to what we did today mistakes you can avoid and and also ways you can take your business to the to the next level right to get into that advanced. My I would say my promise is is. You know like to become a pro on Advance seller on Amazon shouldn’t take you shouldn’t take you years, you know, my my ambition in these workshops to to bridge that Gap from beginner intermediate to Advanced, you know to a lot less maybe just one after after boot camp, you know, you could leave saying you you have taken it to the next level but also I’m going to do.

[00:37:39] I’m going to do more advanced Workshop the. You know not to get too technical right now, but I’m gonna go to to what I think keyword research looks like in 2019 how it should be really how this keyword research should be done now. A lot of the things that people learn the, you know, a lot of us have done in the past doesn’t work anymore or there’s just better ways.

[00:38:09] And you know really just going to like you said hacks tips that I think can make a difference, you know, the the information information is power and you know when you are applying some tips that are not I wouldn’t say too common knowledge you do have an edge right you have an advantage. So I’m going to be sharing that for both beginners and also on the workshop for advanced sellers, you know cater to their to their skill level and where they’re at in their business.

[00:38:43] Great. Thanks so much Daniel and appreciate it. And it’s a little bit about your agency and how people can find you I guess, you know, kind of just wrapping up today’s today’s interview. Yeah, of course. Well, once again I my agency is called AMZ clever my team and I we we do for you Amazon advertising area that you can think of including other new video ads.

[00:39:13] We’ve done a we’ve done a little bit of that, you know working along with Amazon and then also do don’t For You full account management. If you just you’re selling retail or selling other to another channels just want somebody to handle Amazon for you. We do it all and we do it well, so that’s the quick quick description of my agency.

[00:39:38] Now, I do have to say we are. We have a waiting list or sellers for Brands to to work with us. If you know if you want to inquire about this, you just go to my website. It’s am Z. Z as in Zebra AMZclever.com in there there’s a contact field drop me a message or to my email Daniel. Daniel@AMZclever just write me an email, you know any time if you have a little free to do this, but you know, if you have a question obviously and what not a seminar question, you know, I’m happy to you know, if I can get you a quick answer that can help I’m happy to do so, \ just write me an email.

[00:40:32] No problem. Yeah, and I mean even definitely always so helpful at our events and everything and I’m really happy to have you on board for the first boot camp and I know you’ve been very supportive of the community, so thank you again for sharing today and I look forward to see ya see it bootcamp and get you know we’ll continue to grow the community together.

[00:40:54] Awesome. Sounds sounds great Mike. Could you if you want to mention the the dates of the Yeah, thanks for helping me. I’m even no problem even for myself. I do want to have when I have a reminder of the yeah, July and we we shorten it down to three days based on feedback, but it’s July 19th, Friday 20 Saturday and 21 and the way it’s going to work is the first day.

[00:41:20] Will be more like roundtables. Like I think you even said you enjoyed those so it’ll be more like, you know, rotating different groups different experts and then the following two days will be the Workshops the Saturday and Sunday three hours each. So I’ll be honest with you. I haven’t picked which if you want to do a Saturday one or day two, but you know, we’re basically have people slotted for these workshops in the following two days either morning 9:00 to 12:00 or afternoon 2:00 to 5:00 p.m.

[00:41:50] So it’ll be yeah, it’ll be like that. So we just feel like it’s gonna be a good balance of because it’s of course is learning but also networking and the workshops. We don’t want to have too many people. So no more than 20 I think but probably more like kind of keeping it a 15 Max but more likely 10 to 15 people in the room and a few different.

[00:42:09] Yeah. Same time potentially, but that’s that’s what we’re working on and it’s been collecting a lot of great feedback. And yeah, it’s all about like you said taking action and having people really really walk away with some value which even it with your even when your speeches where you’re doing like a 3040 minute talk.

[00:42:30] I know people are taking crazy notes and actions and. For sure for years, especially at the summit’s and everybody people said that they go back to their hotel room after and Implement so I know you’re especially your sessions but especially with every session of Workshop we’re going to have we’re going to try to make it, you know, not just something to watch on on YouTube, but something that people can actually Implement and meet great people at the same time. Right the content taught in.

[00:42:57] The bootcamp will will stay there right closed door or the whole thing closed doors because you know, like will have people we encourage everybody bring their laptop and we want people to sign NDA and closures. Yeah, just to make sure one quick thing quick thing I want to add is so Mike.

[00:43:17] I’ve been to a lot of events about what amazon and you know online marketing and the the crowd that you know, is willing to buy a plane ticket and come, you know, let’s say if somebody’s in the US come all the way to Asia, but the crowd that gets together here is very very good. Like most of the times people are you know, they they are serious about their business about their learning.

[00:43:44] I’ve been to a lot when I was in the US have been to a lot of events that you know, some that are free or maybe just, you know, very cheap to attend and you know I don’t want to say all the time but a lot of times you get what you pay for. So but the events that I’ve been here in Asia where there are international people come fly from all the places that the crowd that gets together is very very powerful and great for like you said networking and the knowledge is very very good.

[00:44:15] Thanks, man. Yeah, I think I think our community is pretty cool because we’re here in Asia. So we actually a lot of people say it’s a little bit higher on experience because if you come out here, you know, you got to be a little bit more serious than others. And also we have very diverse people from even we have sellers based in India that are confirmed to come there’s there, you know, we have a lot of repeat attendees from our previous events.

[00:44:40] Like you said that really enjoyed it and I think one guy Danny McMillan he would tell me he feels like it’s like a he thinks it’s because of me because I’m like the nice guy. I’m the well I so he says it kind of sets the environments people would be more comfortable and more open and more casual like even with this podcast.

[00:44:58] I tried to try to make people more comfortable and open and he says I remember him saying that to me at the last Summit is you think it’s because of the way I the way I kind of encourage people and my nice, you know, almost be nicer to open one. But I some kind of popups I gonna hear a but anyway, go ahead.

[00:45:23] Yeah. No worries I think to to your credit, I think you you are successful at that. I think people feel. I mean you are the you’re very welcoming host so. Oh, yeah. Thanks dude. Yeah, but I anyway it’s going to be great. I’m excited to be part of the scene in Thailand and work alongside you and your team and the other, you know, the other speakers is looking forward to it.

[00:45:49] Thanks so much, Daniel. Are you looking to grow your international business from Asia Amazon FBA import-export and cross-border e-commerce are Trends in today’s world, especially here at Global from Asia and we put together an ecourse ebook both actually all together for you for free with some fast track getting you going global from Asia.

[00:46:16] Check it out at GlobalfromAsia.com/ebook you get the book as well as an interactive e-course that will be catered based on how you answer the email series. So I look forward to seeing you on the inside. Check it out. GlobalfromAsia.com/ebook. Thank you, Daniel. I you know, I think I’m too modest.

[00:46:39] I’ve had people I just wanted to hear and surveys for those that are on our email newsletter. And I’ve gotten some I try to have an anonymous. I want to hear the painful feedback is sometimes people say Mike. I’m too modest. I’m too shy I’m to not confident enough in my interviews things like that.

[00:46:56] But you know hearing stuff like what Daniel says, you know, he has always said amazing things about these events. We’ve done I do appreciate him supporting the cause. I hope you enjoyed it. Of course, we could have gone on for hours. But you know, this is this is just the way the world works. He has amazing knowledge and experiences and he does this for a clients for Major Brands.

[00:47:16] And like he said he’s he’s even got a waiting list for to do business with him and I do think is worth it if you are are in that category for his big client requirements you maybe should reach out to him. Say hopefully maybe say the podcasts is how you heard about them. Hopefully these podcast help our guests our guests try to make sure to give us Goods good information and helpful for totally free no strings attached.

[00:47:44] But of course GFAs got to make some kind of money. We do have great sponsors like goremit.hk but we also need to do some events or some kind of ways to support what we do here and send my kids to school. How about that and maybe make a school fund but I don’t want to be a beggar and I might say

[00:48:03] Sometimes my wife is amazing. If you don’t know she helps a lot with the show.  Some people ask if she has a job. I mean, this is her job. She helps us helps me she helps the community. I mean she’s tougher than me and for that’s for sure but. I was talking to dinner with the kids about the boot camp and I don’t like the beg and I don’t nobody likes to beg but I think we’re gonna have an amazing boot camp.

[00:48:28] I’m feeling really confident about it and excited and I want some more amazing people to come out. We got amazing application people to want to host host a session. We got people that want to come out. Let me go back to my blah blah blah. So I think I hinted towards it in the show. But with the setting on the mocha pots.

[00:48:52] We did..we messed up. We didn’t turn off the returns to be resold. So like I said in the interview some people got dirty moka pots, isn’t that unbelievable that Amazon has a default to resell returns. I didn’t know that and maybe you didn’t know that for quite a while since the Sisitano or paraliving didn’t know that either and now I got to check again because Daniel just said that even if you turn it off and there’s a new category it pops back on which is crazy.

[00:49:20] Totally crazy. I think we selected destroy it immediately just garbage that Moka pot. It comes back Bam gone, but um, You just got to learn this thing. But one thing is true Daniel says back up your data, you know it once it goes into the Amazon platform. If you get locked out if you get your account shut down or some hijacker somebody that loves you so much that wants to destroy your listing gets into that.

[00:49:48] You know, you can’t really. Get a backup. So I like that whole have a Excel back up. I was actually chatting to Daniel after the recording. I would you know, I host these MP3s on Amazon S3 or the static hostings if you notice the show is on podcast.globalfromasia.com/GF a250.mp3. If you type that indirectly that is where this host hosting of This mp3 is so he got me thinking I got to do same

[00:50:19] For the Amazon listings, I might put them on Amazon S3 in high-resolution, you know multi megabyte each image for each listing. We don’t have that many listings. Actually. I got to get off my butt and get more listings for sisitano, but you know, it’s really good to have all these backed up who knows.

[00:50:36] It’s true. I mean I just and I manually uploading them now, he’s like, yeah, when you get up there, you’re going to be pretty busy keeping up with all those so I didn’t know you could it would actually. Amazon when you upload this Excel file, it pulls the images from like he said imgur that free image hosting or maybe is paid.

[00:50:54] Well, whatever hosting so I’m going to probably use like resources.sisitano.com/sku1.jpg or something like that so that I keep track of all my SKUs and then 1 2 3 will be for the image number. So the first image would be one second image 2 and that way I can remember it. I did that back in the day with my first bar supplies business.

[00:51:17] What I did was we called it Master update. And we had about 400 or something skus in that website and it was a nightmare updating. So we would bulk upload. I use Channel advisor back in the day to eBay and Amazon as well as a web store. So we had a sub domain for the web store kind of like Shopify these days and with the WordPress and another site or even before of WordPress if you believe the days before WordPress 2005 2004-2006.

[00:51:46] Well as you maybe I think Channel visors around 2005. Anyways, you know, I had Master updates x dot XLS and it’s true. I did have the images URLs in those columns D spreadsheets get to be freaking massive, but I’m definitely going to implement this stuff from Daniel and and it’s true. I mean Amazon is not a business it’s a channel.

[00:52:08] We said this in our events with prices on various shows. You know, I really always recommend people make a website. I know I’ve had actually some people say what’s the point, you know, even Jerry gone back in the day from he was on the show. He said at an event like just do Amazon. Don’t even bother making a website for all your focus on one channel build it up big.

[00:52:31] I guess. That’s true. But I don’t know. I’m still old-fashioned. I like to have my own domain. I feel like this my real value. So mostly if you look up stuff I do I have website still so I’m stuck in the stone ages but I still think it’s worth it and then you could maybe have woocommerce or Shopify data feeds you can have your Amazon data feed.

[00:52:51] Even an affiliate program maybe even have a reseller program but it all centers around this data, but then actually was scary. I was talking to Daniel after to show to you know, we chatted a bit. I think you did a good what do you guys think? He was like did I do good? I’m like, yeah. It was pretty awesome and.

[00:53:07] How is giving us some feedback and the scary thing? Is that that if you map it wrong, he says you got a double double check when you import that file because you might put the wrong field like the I think one time back in the day. I put the weight as the price and the price is the weight and then I was like people can obviously if you don’t if you don’t check and it uploads and they’re both number and you know, it’s database basically right at a spreadsheet as a data base.

[00:53:31] So once you import that if the number field is a number whether it’s pounds or kilograms or dollars or RNBs or whatever. The number is a number right? So if you put if you somehow crisscrossed it in the columns, that would be pretty big nightmare. If you know if it’s a dollar instead of a pound and you know 20 pounds instead of.

[00:53:55] one pound, you know, I’m saying like Flip Flip them wrong. You know, he says you got he says he doubles or triples check specially if you don’t hundreds of SKUs hastens or whatever you want to call these things but I I mean, I think that was my big takeaway is spreadsheet. Of course, you got to make sure you’re optimizing the seller Central’s for returns you’re optimizing them for other other items and.

[00:54:20] Somebody in your team has to be the expert somebody like you somebody like Daniel not me, I’m not the data guy. Unfortunately, like I said, I’m the creative at least I think I’m creative. I mean, that’s why I like podcasting because I can just blah blah blah and you some of you guys actually like this blah blah blah.

[00:54:38] I’m not Excel number crunching person. That’s why people they’ll do well and that part and I think I do well making this. Blah blah blah on this microphone, but I think whatever it is in your team. I have a course. I have a course about Amazon beginner one, but just a few hour course I’ve done in person and I say are you the artist or the garbage man?

[00:55:02] And I what I mean by that is the the artist is the person that knows the product that knows the industry that enjoys the creative process maybe writing a blog posts or that enjoys the the what I think is the creative part and then there’s the Garbage man no offense to Daniel, but what I mean is he probably doesn’t really care what product it is

[00:55:27] He doesn’t need to care people like him make a lot of money on Amazon because they’re really good at data. They he put his Legos that transformed into Excel that transformed into Big Data of Amazon is extremely valuable skill and he doesn’t probably really care what product he sells where I kind of care about what product I sell to be honest.

[00:55:46] I usually tell I usually tell people to care about the product that they sell but probably most big sellers don’t really care because they’re just looking at the data but I think you gotta maybe have a complementary skill set in] your team the artist and the garbage man, unless you’re like a massive seller like that’s just looking at data scrawling top sellers and sourcing them and optimizing listings and.

[00:56:14] Making as much money as possible make a lot more money than maybe I ever will but I like to actually know what I’m selling. I like to have an enjoyment of of the process and build relationships, which is actually happening more in Sisitano. I’m getting more involved than I had expected when we launched that a couple years ago.

[00:56:33] But at least I kind of like that stuff but you know somebody in a team should enjoy like the creative process, I believe so while you know, we’re not talking about tech startups here with e-commerce and Amazon or whatever but there is different types of people in a team that you should look for.

[00:56:48] There should be the person that likes to Excel spreadsheets and there should be somebody that kind of likes the creative process and maybe even a third person is kind of like the logistics supply chain and of course, you could outsource all of these two different people. You can hire all three of those different types of people but you know, a lot of times in tech startups, they say it’s better to have them in the court founding team, but you could hire Daniel and you could hire an artist and you could hire Logistics person.

[00:57:17] I mean, there’s plenty of guests we’ve had on the show that are amazing logistics companies and service providers that you could pay money to and they can have their team help you. So whether you hire/outsource somebody outside of your company to do that, I still think you need those I would say three parts when I did startup weekends and things like that back in the day you’d have the programmer you have the business person and then you have maybe the designer.

[00:57:43] Those are three, but I think in e-commerce you need the data guy the artist the kind of person that knows the industry and then you need the logistics person sourcing person or hire those those if you don’t have them, but I think although my blah blah blah hear the kids screaming downstairs, and I hope you guys enjoy the rest of your week.

[00:58:03] Thank you for listening all the way through the end. Thank you sponsors. Thank you guests. Thank you future attendees to the global from Asia boot camp. Thank you in advance. Take care. To get more info about running an international business, please visit our website at www.GlobalfromAsia.com that’s www.GlobalfromAsia.com.

[00:58:26] Also be sure to subscribe to our iTunes feed. Thanks for tuning in.