Amazon Seller Tips For 2024 Including What’s New with Cameron Messick

Andy Splichal:

Welcome to the Make Each Click Count podcast. This is your host, Andy Splichal, and we are happy to welcome this week's guest to discuss today's topic, which is Amazon seller tips for 2024, including what's new. This week's guest is the head of Amazon marketing and true online presence, who is here to give us a look into 2024, what is working, what isn't, what is new a big welcome to Cameron Messick. Hey Cameron.

Cameron Messick:

Hey, Andy. Nice to be here again. Thank you for having me.

Andy Splichal:

Yeah, thanks for joining us. Now, before we get into what is new for the year, right before the holidays, you put together a training course on launching products on Amazon. And for this, I know you created a Christmas coal product. I'm curious, did anything surprise you with the launch of a new product on Amazon right before the holidays?

Cameron Messick:

Yeah, so I definitely had a late start to that just because I didn't source everything that I needed to early enough, just because it was a little bit last minute planned. But I was just shocked how quickly it took off. I was expecting that it wouldn't do nearly as well as it did. So that really shocked me. Usually when you want to get into a seasonal product, you should start a couple of months before the season even begins to ramp up, which I definitely did not. So that was definitely my biggest surprise is just how quickly we were able to ramp things up.

Andy Splichal:

And did you run any ads for your product or was it just all organic?

Cameron Messick:

No, I definitely ran ads for the product. I think it's very difficult to succeed on Amazon without ads nowadays since it was such a kind of niche category and really it was just a Christmas coal kind of gag gift type deal. The strategy that I used was really just going super aggressive for a couple keywords that were really popular for other competitor coal products. And when I went after those, I was actually able to rank organically very well and maintain that organic ranking. So towards the end, I guess towards the middle, I wasn't having to spend that much on advertising, so I was able to be very profitable with it.

Andy Splichal:

So you used keyword research and you decided on a few words that competitors for that product were going after, and then you just spent advertising money on those keywords, correct?

Cameron Messick:

Yeah, just to try to gain organic ranking for those keywords.

Andy Splichal:

And did you run those ads all the way through the Christmas season, or did you turn them off once you started ranking organically?

Cameron Messick:

I did run them through the entire season up until basically we were running out of inventory and we had no more inventory to send in. That would make it at least before Christmas. At that point, I did actually turn off ads entirely, and I was still maintaining a pretty healthy sales volume. It definitely dipped once I turned off the ads, but I was still able to maintain a healthy sales volume just due to the organic ranking that we were able to obtain.

Andy Splichal:

And what kind of words were they? I mean, were they more generic words or were they something really niche toward Cole gifts or Christmas joke? How generic were those keywords?

Cameron Messick:

Yeah. So actually, at first I started to kind of do a little bit more broad targeting just because it was more cheap, more like Christmas coal stocking stuffers or stuff like that. But I actually started to go aggressive towards keywords like Christmas coal or stocking stuff or gag gifts or just gag gifts for people. And I was able to rank very well for those.

Andy Splichal:

Now, your course, how you can make money selling on Amazon in three easy steps. It's now available inside. Make each click count. University. I know you go through all the tools in that course on what you used, on the keyword research and how you set everything up. But I guess, in your own words, can you give us an overview of the course and what somebody would learn by going through it?

Cameron Messick:

Yeah, I believe somebody could learn just basically how to start from not even having an idea on Amazon to starting a successful product that you can really rank within your category that you choose to go into.

Andy Splichal:

And I guess how profitable was mean. You sourced it, you made what, what was the final result of your product launch here in the holidays?

Cameron Messick:

Yeah, so all cost of goods, I definitely didn't source the materials the cheapest I could have. So next year, I'm actually going to be purchasing the products from overseas through Alibaba and able to get a much lower cost of cost per good or cost of goods. I ended up selling top line revenue, around $6,000 worth of Christmas coal, and my profit margin on that was about 15%. Okay.

Andy Splichal:

And I guess it was profitable enough. You're going to do it on the side next year again?

Cameron Messick:

Yeah, I think it was pretty fun. It was kind of fun to have a product that was doing so well. And it really did go, like I said, it almost went not necessarily viral within the subcategory, but it was ranking in the top ten almost every time.

Andy Splichal:

Well, it sounds like, I mean, this course would be great for somebody who's even just wanting to do a side hustle on trying to figure out how to launch a product and even create a business on something that's online. What are some of the tools that you show off in the course?

Cameron Messick:

I show off a lot of tools to help get keyword research, like Jungle Scout and helium ten. I also use tools or I show off tools to help. I guess mainly it's jungle scout and helium ten, but I use those tools to do both keyword research to help find product sourcing and really what we can. There's a lot of other functions of those tools that I actually didn't even go over just to kind of help increase your profitability long term. We could definitely create more courses on how to use those tools alone.

Andy Splichal:

Now time again, we talk to our private clients and all of them come in. Some of them do an FBA fulfillment by Amazon. All of them are doing fulfillment by know. In your experience, when somebody changes from FBM fulfillment by merchant to fulfillment by Amazon, what kind of lift do they typically see with their, typically they see.

Cameron Messick:

Around a 15% increase. And I actually used to work at a much larger agency that had hundreds of brands and it was consistent there as well. So it's not a small group of people or brands that I've seen do this. It's a very large group of data that I've pulled, but typically it's around a 15% to 20% increase. If they convert to FBA, what do.

Andy Splichal:

You find some of the reasons that companies don't want to do know?

Cameron Messick:

I actually do think there are some times where FBA doesn't make sense, and that's really just because the company maybe designed a product that isn't necessarily the best design. For example, maybe they have a glass product that doesn't have a seal on the top. So because of that it leaks when Amazon is kind of just not being as gentle as they should be with a product like that, or it's a very heavy product that just costs a ton to ship. As a matter of fact, I had a client that sold mattresses and for them it didn't make sense for them to sell through FBA just at first. But what we were able to do is we were actually able to have them invest in one of those machines that basically vacuum seals the mattress. So it's the size of a massive burrito, essentially. And then they were able to sell it through FBA. So I think a lot of it is people start FBM and for their current existing product, it might not make sense to do FBM.

Cameron Messick:

But a lot of times we're able to work with customers and come up with solutions that are very creative to make it so it will work through FBA. Just because FBA does have that 15% conversion rate increase, which will help you save on advertising, it'll typically help you save on customer service, on your customer rating, your kind of store satisfaction rating. So really it does make sense most of the time to invest money into making a product or at least helping adjust your product. So it does work for FBA.

Andy Splichal:

How hard is it? I know we talk to a lot of smaller sellers and they're worried about, I guess, just logistics of getting products to Amazon.

Cameron Messick:

It is super easy. They really make it as easy as possible because Amazon wants to use FBA to send stuff in. I mean, Amazon really will show you every single step that you need to take in order to send something in FBA. Really the only confusing part is if Amazon loses inventory, which happens at times, is how do you go after them for that? And that's definitely something that we can help assist brands with. There's plenty of services out there that also help brands with that type of issue.

Andy Splichal:

So what's new in 2024 for Amazon? What is on the horizon or just launched that Amazon sellers should know about?

Cameron Messick:

Yeah, so just kind of new things that Amazon's launching. One of the things that I am most excited and nervous about is Amazon's freight they're rolling out. The reason I'm nervous about it is just because if you haven't looked at this, this is not just the FDA freight. This is actually basically replacing like UPS or FedEx where they're coming and picking up truckloads at your warehouse and delivering it for your customers. Not even if it's just an Amazon order, if it's a Walmart order or website order or anything. They're actually using their fulfillment system now to roll that out and to ship those to the end consumer. I'm a little bit worried about that. Like I said, just because Amazon already seems like they're a monopoly.

Cameron Messick:

So just one more thing. They're going to take over right now the costs seem to be just very cheap. But as we've seen throughout the years, Amazon takes a very large percentage of the market share and then they jack up their prices. So that's something that I'm very excited for. I don't think that's going to make any sort of significant market share, I guess. I don't think they're going to take any significant market share from FedEx or UPs this year, but I do think they probably will within the upcoming talking.

Andy Splichal:

We're talking just to clarify. So they're going to deliver anything but with their blue Amazon trucks?

Cameron Messick:

Essentially, yes.

Andy Splichal:

Wow.

Cameron Messick:

Okay. Yeah. So I know that there's a couple of marketplaces that are trying to fight that, like Walmart actually. If you have those Amazon blue trucks that are fulfilling your products for actually. And if a customer somehow sees that or if Walmart sees that, you can actually get kicked off the Walmart program. Obviously Walmart is probably the biggest competitor of Amazon right now, so that's why they're not happy about that. And that's the way that they're trying to have brands avoid doing this. But yeah, that's exactly what they're doing.

Andy Splichal:

Wow, interesting. What else is new? What else has Amazon got going on that might help companies increase their sales?

Cameron Messick:

So this isn't necessarily a new program for 2024. It came out last year, but it's definitely working this year, which is an Amazon creators program. So Amazon actually has a way for us to work with affiliates through Amazon now, and it has been functioning very well for many brands. Essentially what this is is currently, if you want to work with influencers, usually have to pay some huge upfront fee for them to just even talk to you. And then on top of that you have to pay a per post fee or a per story fee and a commission on top of all that. So typically it's a very expensive thing. But Amazon has now made it just insanely simple where you're able to actually create a campaign in the back of your account and then you're able to choose the interest group that Amazon, I guess, of which creators Amazon is going to send the opportunity or the campaign to, and then the creators will actually be able to earn a commission if they sell your product. So what's nice about that is Amazon creators actually already make up to 10% through the Amazon affiliate program.

Cameron Messick:

So you're now able to offer an additional percentage on top of that. So if you say I want to offer 10%, then the creators are actually making up to 20% on every single sale they make. So they're very motivated to promote your product, especially if it does well. They'll continue to promote it on all of their channels, which is a very exciting thing that it's that cheap because we're only paying if the creators make a sale. So it's really zero risk. Something that's also just fantastic about that is if you don't currently have the in house marketing team for social media or for really any off Amazon channels, this is a really good way to get your name out there other than just an Amazon brand you can now start becoming. You might start coming up in blogs that these creators are writing or in their social media posts and it'll actually help your overall brand Halo grow. So I just find it very interesting that Amazon is starting to work with off Amazon creators.

Andy Splichal:

Yeah, no, that's interesting. Who are, I mean, who makes up these creators? Do you know?

Cameron Messick:

So they're creators that go and sign up themselves and they choose the interests that they are interested in through the Amazon affiliates program. And then Amazon basically just chooses 200 random people for every single campaign that you start. So one mistake that I see a lot of brands do is they'll just create one campaign for their entire segment of products, whereas if you create multiple campaigns for multiple different segments of products, you'll be able to reach more potential creators.

Andy Splichal:

Now, who should use this? This is people that have their own brand, I assume. And you're not reselling brand names under your store, correct?

Cameron Messick:

It is for people only. For people who are actually manufacturers, you also have to be brand registered, just like most of these kind of extra tools on Amazon. Amazon really is pushing everybody to be brand registered. And I'll get into that as one of the other things that they're rolling out for 2024. You also have to be an active brand on Amazon. As soon as you have brand registry, you don't qualify for this program. You actually have to use their Amazon posts program in order to get followers. And once you receive a certain amount of followers, then you'll actually be able to be qualified for this many.

Andy Splichal:

And for those who might not know, what are Amazon posts and how many do you need?

Cameron Messick:

So Amazon posts are basically, I like to call it as Amazon's version of their social media. They appear every single time on mobile listings. But I actually have started to see Amazon posting them on desktop listings as well. Essentially what it is, is on your Amazon mobile app, if you go on any listing and you scroll down past the main images, you'll see brands related to this item and those are the posts. So then it'll show a picture of a competitor product and it will show whatever they happen to write about that particular product. And you can actually click on that product link from that listing and go to that other competitor's product. What's cool about these is they're no cost. You can actually have your products appearing on competitor listings within the same category of yours without having to spend a dime, which is not typical for Amazon.

Cameron Messick:

I would assume that they're going to make this probably organic always, but they're going to make it so you can spend money on this to promote it.

Andy Splichal:

More, kind of like boosting, but as.

Cameron Messick:

Of right now, it's free. Exactly. So I mean, you might as well get in while it's free because Amazon always likes to charge money. I mean, that's where they make the most of their money is from their advertising. And as far as how many you need to qualify for this program, that's not something that they have said openly at the moment. But you do need to be an active poster.

Andy Splichal:

Got it. Now, I know it's not new, but I know we started also using on one of our private clients. Can you talk about the Amazon repricing tool to help companies who might be selling their own stuff but having a hard time in getting the buy box for certain items?

Cameron Messick:

Yeah, and this is very common for kind of really companies that have been around for a very long time where they've historically really only sold to distributors or to wholesalers. And now there's just tons of people on Amazon and they aren't winning their buy box. The repricing tool, you can actually set a minimum price and a maximum price on Amazon and you can set up multiple different rules. So you can tell Amazon that you automatically want to have your price beat the other resellers on Amazon by one penny. You can have it match the resellers exactly if they're undercutting your price. That way you don't have to really worry about repricing it on a regular basis. Now the one downside to the Amazon tool is they won't raise your price back up. Amazon is always worried about getting the best deal for the customers.

Cameron Messick:

I would assume this is probably the reason why. But there are a lot of third parties repricing software that will actually reduce your price. But then if the resellers increase their price, it'll actually increase your price too, just to make sure you get the best margin possible.

Andy Splichal:

Now, many sellers initially know I have a great product. Maybe they're selling it on their own website, but they've never sold it on Amazon. But they know I'll just list it on Amazon and it'll blow up. People will start buying. What would you tell this person who's thinking of launching their products on Amazon?

Cameron Messick:

So there's really two things you need to look at. Is, is the category that you're going into competitive? If so, how competitive is it and how unique is your product really? Because then you'll be able to look at how much you'll need to invest into advertising. This is definitely something that an agency like ourselves could help you with. And if it's not a competitive category, if it's like kind of a new kind of unique category, then is there any demand for it and are you going to have to create demand for that category? There was a product that I worked with that was actually hemp soda. So it was kind of CBD soda. Yeah, it was very unique. It was brand new and we were actually able to sell it through Amazon. But there was no demand for was.

Cameron Messick:

It made it very difficult because when somebody did find it, they were a repeat customer really a lot because they liked that type of product, but it was just really difficult to create that demand for that particular product. So we were having to spend a lot of money off Amazon, almost like billboard type advertising, just to create awareness for that category because nobody even knew about it.

Andy Splichal:

How important are the product listings versus traffic? Whether you are driving paid traffic on Amazon or paid traffic off of Amazon, I guess. And you don't even have know, how long does it take to start seeing traction on Amazon?

Cameron Messick:

Yeah. So the listings are, I would say the most important thing, if you have a fantastic product, but nobody knows what the product is or they have no trust in the product, they're not going to buy it. The likelihood that you're going to have a good conversion rate is very low. So before you start sending traffic on or off of Amazon, you want to make sure you have very good images, at least six images that aren't just six images, just to have the number six, but you want to create infographics that are telling people about the product. For Amazon, I like to kind of see if, I like to gauge a quality of a listing, if it'll pass. What I like to call the caveman test is basically, could a caveman look at your images and see what the product is and why it's special without having to read the bullet points? Very, very few people read the bullet points. That's where a lot of brands think that people, they're putting the information so they think that people know how great the product is based on what they wrote. But most people don't even read that.

Cameron Messick:

You kind of have to think about it as like the Instagram or the TikTok scroller, where you're just looking at images for half a second and moving on. It's a very kind of fast paced, moving environment. So the listings are absolutely, and especially the images on the listing are vital. One thing that I want to point out that is kind of new for 2024 is Amazon is actually pushing more importance towards images as well. The sponsored brand type advertising, which is that banner ad. Whenever you search something on Amazon, starting at the end of this month, Amazon is actually going to not even serve that ad if it doesn't have an image anymore. So Amazon also sees how important the images are. Customers don't care about what's written.

Cameron Messick:

They really just want to see an image of the product being used. So images, images, images. That's kind of the 2024 push that at least I'm seeing Amazon making.

Andy Splichal:

What about using AI generated images?

Cameron Messick:

Yeah, and that's actually something that is interesting you bring up because that's something that Amazon also rolled out. You can actually use, at least for their advertising console. You can actually select your, it'll actually use your hero image for your product. And you can type in a little blurb and say, put this, like, let's say this cappuccino mix in a kitchen with a cup of coffee next to it, and it does a decent job. It's very impressive. What I like about using the Amazon AI tool is you don't have to worry about it being copyrighted. You don't have to worry about it stealing somebody else's image versus like the Chat GPT dolly tool where they just go and scrape the Internet. I don't know exactly how it works, but I've heard issues with people using images that are copyrighted and then getting in big trouble for that.

Cameron Messick:

Personally, I've used both tools. I believe the dolly tool does a better job at the moment just because it has a lot more power. I don't know really how it works, but it does a much better job at making the images look better. But the Amazon one is also free. You don't have to pay anything for it, and you can give it a hundred different prompts and finally find one image that you like to see. So AI images, especially for ads, I think are good because people aren't looking for a very long time for infographics and stuff like that. I haven't seen it work ever. But if you're trying to just get a decent lifestyle image, or at least just a lifestyle image, to have one while you're maybe taking photography, I think it's a good kind of band aid, but not a good permanent solution at the moment.

Andy Splichal:

What about reviews? I mean, the biggest thing, a company first launches their products and they're not going to have, at least if it's a new listing, they're not going to have any reviews. What is the quickest way? Because reviews are vital for the conversion process. What's the quickest way to get reviews?

Cameron Messick:

The quickest way to get reviews currently is the to get. You don't want to go and ask your friends to leave five star reviews. You don't want to incentivize people to leave five star reviews. Amazon is very good at catching you, so I would never recommend anybody do that. And that will get you shut down as a seller potentially and kicked off of Amazon forever. So that's definitely a high risk thing to do. So the Amazon vine program is the best option in my opinion. What's nice about the vine program is that, well, it used to be free for everybody, but now you only can get two reviews for free.

Cameron Messick:

And then if you want to get up to ten reviews, they charge you $100. If you want to get up to 30 reviews for free, then you have to pay $200, I guess, not for free. But one thing to keep in mind about the vine reviews is they are very honest reviewers. It's not guaranteed that it's going to be a good product. So if you have a problem with leakage, if you sell like a liquid product, or if you have powder product that leaks, they will give you a bad review and they will leave images about the bad review. So you need to make sure that your product is a five star worthy product before you sign up for a program like that. And that program also is only available for people who are brand registered.

Andy Splichal:

Is that available for any type of product or are there certain restrictions on product types?

Cameron Messick:

So it's not available for adult products, but for most product categories? Yes, it's available for everybody.

Andy Splichal:

So, I mean, you've gone over a ton of different things that you got to think about when launching a new product. I guess if you are a company and you're thinking, well, heck, I'm just going to hire an agency, what type of questions should you be asking that agency?

Cameron Messick:

What I'd ask is how often do they look at the listings. Listings are not something that's kind of just a set at once and then forget it. You want to make sure that they're looking at it on a regular basis, and maybe they say that they're doing on a regular basis, but you just need to make sure that, I guess once if you do decide to work with them, you're looking at kind of what they're doing. They should be a b testing titles on a regular basis. They should be a B testing main images on a regular basis. You should also ask how they're getting keywords, how they're doing their keyword research. A lot of times I see agencies that just assume that they know what your product is and they go and put a ton of keywords in the listings. And I think everybody has probably made this mistake at least once, and then the keywords are not at all relevant to the product.

Cameron Messick:

So make sure that you make time to work with your agencies to help them to choose products or keywords to go after. But also listen to the agencies in terms of which keywords are going to rank the most. Because sometimes I've seen multiple times where brands are just adamant that this keyword or this title has to be written this way, but it doesn't rank at all for keywords. So I would say, again, what to look for in an agency is just how often they're changing things and also how they're choosing what to put into the listings.

Andy Splichal:

Now, you've been busy. I know you're about to release your first book. What is the title and when do you anticipate it being released?

Cameron Messick:

So the title of the book is create and launch your Amazon bestseller. I think that's a pretty fun title. And as far as when I anticipate it being released, I'm co writing it with somebody. So I'm working with them to get a couple finalized pieces. But as soon as that's done, I would hope to have it within the next three to four weeks. Finalized.

Andy Splichal:

Yeah, super exciting. Super exciting. Now, how can interest, are you going to sell it on Amazon?

Cameron Messick:

Yes, definitely. I'm going to sell it through their KDP program.

Andy Splichal:

Awesome. Hey, so how can an interested listener learn more about working with you, Cameron?

Cameron Messick:

Yeah, you can either email me at cameron@trueonlinepresence.com or you can just go to trueonlinepresence.com and you can fill out the contact us form. Those are definitely the easiest ways to work with us.

Andy Splichal:

Well, this has been great. Is there anything else you would like to add before we wrap it up.

Cameron Messick:

Today, I guess, just to kind of reiterate one thing for the kind of new for 2024, just make sure that it's not just a product that you're selling on Amazon, but it's actually a brand that you're selling on Amazon. That's something that I've seen really make somebody's success from okay to great.

Andy Splichal:

What do you mean by that?

Cameron Messick:

If you just have one product that's just an interesting product, like I would even throw myself under the bus for the Christmas coal. It's a gimmick. It's not going to really go anywhere far. But if I were to turn that into a line of products, like maybe some cold bubble gum and actually build a brand and apply for brand registry, then Amazon will give you access to the creators. They'll give you access to everything. So the more that I see Amazon restricting things to only people who have brand registry, the more it's telling me that Amazon is really trying to work with brands, not just individual products.

Andy Splichal:

It's a good tip. All right, well, this has been great. Anything else beyond that?

Cameron Messick:

Nope, that's it for now.

Andy Splichal:

All right, well, thank you for joining us again today, Cameron. Thank you for listeners. Remember, if you like this episode, please go to Apple podcasts and leave us an honest review. And if you're looking for more information regarding Cameron, his upcoming book, or true online presence, you will find the links in the show notes below. In addition, if you are interested in checking out his recent course on selling on Amazon, visit the make each click Count University, where you can currently access his master class and all other content for just $19 a month. Well, that's it for today. Remember to stay safe, keep healthy and happy marketing, and I'll talk to you in the next episode.