Amazon Print on Demand

[SEOMadHatter]

I've dabbled with Amazon in the past doing a little bit of retail arbitrage and FBA stuff. It's one of the biggest markets in the world and I don't know why it's taken me so long to take a proper look at it.

I toyed with it a little a month ago. $140 in profit over the last 6 weeks but I haven't done a whole lot with it.

When you first upload an item it gets a boost from Amazon in terms of popularity. Giving new items a chance to convert and rank better I assume. After that, the rankings dropped off the map and my sales started to decline.

I've tried a mix of mass producing products and taking the time to create quality ones. Either method can clearly work but I think I'm doing enough mass automation stuff. I'd like to take this as a chance to make some actual quality content.

It doesn't hurt that the girl I'm seeing at the moment is a graphics designer so it might even look good.

Rather than just posting items and waiting to see what happens this time I'm going to be running some promotion to them. The goal is to profit from Amazon's own marketplace of buyer traffic - but in order to rank and starting picking up these sales, I'm going to give them a bit of help to begin with.

The Promotion

Running Amazon's internal paid ads, Some AdWords and some social media bot traffic to them. I'm prepared to lose some money on the paid ads to begin with if it leads to better ranking and more organic sales later on.

The Journal

I have a bunch of other projects on at the moment so this is very much a side hustle. The overall goal is 10 items minimum before I decide how viable it is and I want to do no less than 1 a week. If I can find the time, I'll finish them sooner.

I'll share stats as I go. There's a trickle from stuff I've already uploaded but it's not really worth talking about so the focus will be on the ones I'm actively promoting.

So Far

I'm going to start with some of the ones I've already uploaded. There are 2... maybe three which I actually like. I'll change the sales copy a bit and start running traffic to them.

 

[kweiss]

I heard that if your product gets lots of clicks, the visibility also rises. There could be some other tricks as well. I would like to know them too if anyone knows anything

 

[dandan594594]

A bit of advice... if your planning to run ads, other than AMS like Adwords, setup a Amazon store to use as your landing page, or create dedicated lading pages for each product. Otherwise the traffic you send has too many distraction with other products.

You can set up a store for MBA through your AMS account. I have several and have found they work much better than directly linking to products.

 

[SEOMadHatter]

Had a bit of an issue with my AdWords account which is sorted now. Paid traffic is a realm I'm very new to but luckily there's a guy in this co-living/working place who uses AdWords as his bread and butter so I'm hopefully going to be able to pick his brain over this.

I'm really excited about this project because it's in a very new realm for me. The downside is I'm a bit backed up this week with some other new projects with some pretty tough time restraints - but I am getting started.

• My first AdWords campaign is in review now. Going to get a crash course on how not to suck at them.
• Working on a lander to catch leads before sending them to the sales page. Going to test with offering them a bonus guide or something.
• Today I'm going to take 1-2 of the existing products I actually like and beef up the sales copy a bit.
• Tweaking the setup for some social traffic to these three. Going to start putting traffic through a lander this week so I can get some feedback about how much traffic I'm generating there.

I've been listening to some podcasts about people who work on Amazon lately. Get a good product and hit it with AdWords and outreach. I'm keen to get started on both and I'll be making some decent time for this project this week hopefully.

I heard that if your product gets lots of clicks, the visibility also rises. There could be some other tricks as well. I would like to know them too if anyone knows anything

Maybe something to test. In theory clicks without conversions would indicate your project is a waste of a ranking. But if they dinged you for that you could do the same thing to your competitor until you had the top spot anyway.

I don't think that would make for a ranking factor one way or another because it would just be too easy to game. That's if they give a shit anyway.

That all said I have more than enough botting and automation journals going on and I don't really want to poke the bear here. If I can pay to get sales and start a product off I'm happy to do that.

A bit of advice... if your planning to run ads, other than AMS like Adwords, setup a Amazon store to use as your landing page, or create dedicated lading pages for each product. Otherwise the traffic you send has too many distraction with other products.

You can set up a store for MBA through your AMS account. I have several and have found they work much better than directly linking to products.

Cheers for the suggestion. If it's niches I already work with I'm actually considering split testing them on a lander and catching emails but I'll see how it goes.

 

[SEOMadHatter]

Took two of the existing products I like. Improved the sales copy a bit and started AdWords campaigns. Started Amazon campaigns as well. Testing keywords, product and auto targetting separately.

One of the guys in the same co living/working place is an AdWords guy so going to pick his brain over campaigns. A girl is a designer so going to talk to her about making some products way better than I can.

Excited to play with this some more since it's two completely new things to me but I have to spend some time on other projects. I'll let these ads run for a day or two then I'm starting a new product and this time I'll hunt out a niche I can get some cheap traffic in first.

 

[SEOMadHatter]

Learning about Adwords quality score. So rather than just blasting the same ad for 100+ keywords, I'm re-creating specific ads for each keyword. Makes it far more likely to get cheap traffic I'm told. Seems to be working better. Getting my first clicks at $0.1.

Starting to look at the competition doing similar kinds of things. There's a real business model here providing actual value to people and compared to a lot of my other projects that's really quite appealing.

So I'm rethinking how I do this. I'm not focusing on the low-end cheap products but more on the... well, slightly less low-end side of things. Starting a JV with a designer who can make decent quality stuff. I find a niche and do the marketing, they make a decent product.

Today I've been reworking how I do the AdWords campaigns, a little work on the social traffic and showing the JV the rough setup. Going to pick out a new niche or two and see how quickly we can get a new product up.

 

[SEOMadHatter]

Was listening to anther podcast on a related concept. Look at the market and make a better product than the competition. Run paid traffic.

I've found a design I should be able to replicate, a popular product I should be able to improve upon and a price point I can undercut.

I also found a relevant sales funnel technique I could use to sell these. It would connect well with both paid and bottled traffic, provide some real value and be highly scalable.

Most of my projects are all about botting traffic. If I can get cheap traffic then even crappy conversion rates are profitable. The view of the guys on the podcast was a focus on the quality of the product, that way you can outbid anyone else and still be profitable.

I like this idea.

I also like the idea of building cool funnels rather than bots. Some of my most fun (and profitable) projects in the past were about the marketing - not botting.

That's not to say I won't be running bot traffic to the funnels I make for this but it does give me a good chance to learn paid ads properly.

The more I look at the market the more I see products which can be improved upon for a lower margin. If I can set them up relatively quickly and the market is there then I don't need a huge margin to justify it.

I'm removing a ton of my old designs and going fresh. The new one is already looking a lot better and I'm talking to designers about taking it further.

I've heard Amazon is having some delay issues lately with print on demand but I'm hoping to have my first product uploaded tomorrow. Hopefully I can start the ad campaigns in a couple of days and that'll give me time to put together the funnel.

 

[SEOMadHatter]

Really struggling with patience on this project. I always like the lean startup MVP approach but I don't have the design skills to make it viable. Finished my first mockup last night and I'm talking to several freelancers about tidying it up which would give me a template for others as well.

The girl I'm dating happens to be a graphics designer as well. She did a quick improvement of my mockup and it immediately hit me as a way more viable product. It looks night and day compared to the crappy design I tried before. It's also going to help justify the higher price point than I would normally try.

Spent a few hours today on the design for a second product. Talking to a few freelancers to try and get it off the ground sooner.

The current plan is to do 10 mock ups of different products, get someone to tidy up the design and start them with Amazon ads with a competitive budget to test them out early. If they convert into sales then I'll start building the sales funnel for external traffic from paid and bot traffic.

I do believe the 80/20 rule is going to happen here so 80% of my sales is likely going to be from one or two of these products so I'm trying to keep emotion out of it. I like the one I designed today, I'd probably use it myself but I need to keep it based on the numbers and the market. Get it done and churn out the next one to begin with.

Enjoying this project so far. It's slow moving without a template or a designer on hand but the model makes sense and hopefully it'll be ready for proper scaling by Q4.

 

[SEOMadHatter]

I know this kind of journal isn't hugely popular on BHW. We're more into the automated traffic and link building to affiliate stuff. I do have more of that going on (and probably a new journal coming in the next week or so) but I'm enjoying this break from regularly scheduled programming.

Got a full-time designer through an agency. Would probably get more bang for my buck by hiring someone directly but I'm trying to balance my time through a couple of different projects at the moment and this presented the quickest way of just getting someone to work and getting products to market.

I've got three mockups done now. All going well I should have he first completed one ready to upload in 48 hours. Probably a couple of days for Amazon to have it online fully and then I can start the first ad campaigns.

 

[mak3r]

Did you apply to get into print-on-demand long ago? I think I applied more than a year ago and still did not hear back

 

[SEOMadHatter]

Generic uploads from before made about $60 profit this month. Deleted 95% of them. Not sure if Amazon cares what else you have uploaded on your account but just to be on the safe side I'm going to focus on the new ones with higher quality.

The designers are already over their ETA. I don't mind them going a bit over if they come back with a design I like but I've dealt with enough freelancers over the years that I'm not holding my breath. I'll see how it goes.

I have three product mockups lined up for three very different niches. One hobby, one sport and one medical condition. Once I get the design back I can use that template to speed things up in making more for each.

The patience aspect of this project is killing me. I don't do sitting around waiting. If I had templates I could at least be preparing more for different niches. In the meantime, I picked up two books on copywriting and I'll make a proper go on the sales copy for these listings.

Did you apply to get into print-on-demand long ago? I think I applied more than a year ago and still did not hear back

Honestly, I've no idea when I joined but it's an old account.

 

[SEOMadHatter]

First product finished draft is back. Honestly? I'm pretty happy with the design itself. It looks pretty professional and way more like a product which could actually sell well. If my crappy ones before were selling then this certainly will.

Wasn't expecting that level of quality.

On the other hand they did mess up the dimensions and some other basic rules. So I can't actually list it. Based on their recent turnaround I don't expect that to change anytime soon.

Going to give them a chance to fix this one and see how long they take to deliver the second which they said they've started.

Got a couple of things to do today. Most of this project is still twiddling my thumbs waiting for them now but I might draft another product and prep the sales copy for this first one for when eventually is ready.

 

[BHPhil]

I wish you good luck and don´t get discouraged I´m sure your patience will be rewarded. Are you currently promoting designs via paid ads?

Cheers

 

[SEOMadHatter]

For the love of fuck. They've fucked up worse than I thought. Despite some very basic instructions they've managed to get it so wrong that most of that design is pretty much unusable. I'm not thrilled right now. I've got on to them to see how quickly we can get a turnaround on the fixes. It's not been a great first experience.

I got a few template design ideas from a friend who works in this area much more than I do. Going to go through it and pick out the bits I like and can apply to other mockups.

I wish you good luck and don´t get discouraged I´m sure your patience will be rewarded. Are you currently promoting designs via paid ads?

Cheers

The current sales have just been organic. I've deleted most of them though.

The ones I'm eventually going to upload will start with Amazon ads. If they convert reasonably well with Amazon ads (considering they already have buyer intent there) I'm going to build sales funnels for external traffic like AdWords and some social media botting. The current plan for those funnels has both a digital and physical element to it.

The goal with the paid traffic is to just try and break even however. If they profit that's a bonus. If they break even then it'll help push the listing up the rankings for organic sales which is the main hope.

 

[SEOMadHatter]

I think working with freelancers might be the thing that kills me. If I'm lucky I'll get to take a few of them with me. Complete nightmare at the moment but if this project turns out to be viable I'll need to get a proper team together to scale it properly.

We've got our first product ready to go. Will probably take a few days before everything is completely up on Amazon (I hear they've had some delays lately) but I'm excited to have one done.

The plan was to start with just Amazon ads but I'm currently working on another project within this same niche so I'm going to do a rough draft of the landing page for this and start running some traffic. Goal is to have that ready this week for the product being live and to (hopefully) get at least one of the other mockups finished and online.

In the meantime I picked up a few books on copywriting. Ca$hvertising, Oglivy on Advertising and The Boron Letters. Certainly not my first time writing sales copy but I feel like it's a good excuse to brush up my copywriting and not just focus on botting free traffic.

 

[anonymous_geek]

I am myself a Graphic designer and I too sell on amazon...
Following

 

[patadeperro]

You may find this analysis I made interesting (or not):

https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/7...stand-amazons-rankings-and-sell-more.1068488/

cheers.

 

[SEOMadHatter]

First product is live. Started ad campaigns.

Switched up the freelancer situation and maybe doing a JV with a graphics designer on top of that.

Two drafts with the freelancer and doing a mock-up design for the JV just now.

Decided against doing the external landing page at the moment. I have content pages for the other project to test with at the moment. If the tests go well or the first ad campaign works then I'll do the landing page early. Otherwise it's probably waiting until early next week but I'll see.

 

[zaogord]

MAYBE this might be of help to you,
If you don't use Placeit, or if you have heard of it but never used coz of its pricing.
In case you are interested in generating Mockups like Placeit without the watermark, lemme know.

i wasted a whole day trying to figure out a way around to get mockups like placeit for free, and I managed to pull it off.

I am starting my own Print On Demand too, focusing on selling on Instagram for now, after i raise a little money i will make a website and sync it with shopify or woocommerce.
I'm not a designer, i steal stuff.

 

[SEOMadHatter]

Alrighty.

First project is live. Ad campaigns started. Made a rough landing page and started up a low CPC AdWords campaign too. Not doing Facebook yet.

I have a full-on funnel plan for this lander but for now, it's just a little pre-sell and chucking them over to Amazon.

One mock up made and passed over to the JV. I've no idea what kind of free time she has so I don't know what to expect there. Not the main focus at the moment.

Changed things up with the freelancer. Got the second product back today and I really love what they've done with it but I think it's going to need the format fixed a bit before we can get that live.

Slowly starting to get somewhere.