99% of 10-Figure Sellers Do This — Only 10% Admit It

Izabela Hamilton is the Founder and CEO of RankBell, a white-glove, done-for-you Amazon concierge that helps sellers launch and rank campaigns, boost sales, and maximize profits. RankBell has been featured in esteemed publications around the globe, including Forbes India, London Daily Post, Yahoo.com, and more.

In addition to her work at RankBell, Izabela is also the co-host of the Seller Sessions podcast and the upcoming Branded by Women Virtual Summit.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• Izabela Hamilton talks about co-hosting the 2021 Branded By Women Virtual Summit
• How RankBell helps sellers get ahead of their competition on Amazon
• The best-kept secrets for ranking on page one on Amazon: reverse ASIN search, alternative keywords, and more
• Izabela reveals how competition — and negative feedback — can improve your brand and products in the long run
• Why do you need a marketing budget as an Amazon seller?
• Some of Izabela’s most effective keyword strategies
• Izabela shares the shocking truth about success on Amazon: 99% of eight-figure sellers are using services like RankBell
• Izabela’s advice for entrepreneurs looking to grow their businesses using an Amazon concierge

In this episode…

Do you have an incredible Amazon product to share with the world, but can’t seem to get the traction you need to grow and scale your business? Are you sick of competing with brands that have worse products but better rankings?

Unfortunately, visibility is a common problem for new and seasoned Amazon sellers. Jumping from page nine to page one on Amazon’s search results can seem like an impossible task, and it’s easy to get frustrated and simply give up. However, Izabela Hamilton has an important insight for you: the key to improving your Amazon rankings and generating more revenue isn’t dumb luck — it’s a ranking service. In fact, Izabela’s company, RankBell, helps sellers everywhere grow their presence, customer base, and profits in a matter of weeks. So, what is Izabela’s advice for accelerating your brand’s growth like never before?

In this episode of the Quiet Light Podcast, Joe Valley sits down with Izabela Hamilton, the Founder and CEO of RankBell, to discuss how to effectively grow your Amazon business by optimizing your rankings. Listen in as Izabela shares her tips for establishing a lasting presence in Amazon’s competitive market and landing a spot on the first page of Amazon’s search results. She also reveals the secret behind every 10-figure seller’s success. Stay tuned!

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Izabela Hamilton on LinkedIn
• Izabela Hamilton on Facebook
• RankBell
• Seller Sessions
• Quiet Light
• Joe Valley
• Mark Daoust
• The Quiet Light Podcast email: [email protected]
• “How to Open AND Manage Multiple Seller Accounts with My Amazon Guy” on the Quiet Light Podcast
• Branded By Women
• Ecommerce Law Group
• Shawn A. Hussain
• Billion Dollar Seller Summit
• Kevin King
• AM/PM Podcast
• Serious Sellers Podcast
• Helium 10
• Cerebro

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Quiet Light, a brokerage firm that wants to help you successfully sell your online business.

There is no wrong reason for selling your business. However, there is a right time and a right way. The team of leading entrepreneurs at Quiet Light wants to help you discover the right time and strategy for selling your business. By providing trustworthy advice, effective strategies, and honest valuations, your Quiet Light advisor isn’t your every-day broker—they’re your partner and friend through every phase of the exit planning process.

If you’re new to the prospect of buying and selling, Quiet Light is here to support you. Their plethora of top-notch resources will provide everything you need to know about when and how to buy or sell an online business. Quiet Light offers high-quality videos, articles, podcasts, and guides to help you make the best decision for your online business.

Not sure what your business is really worth? No worries. Quiet Light offers a free valuation and marketplace-ready assessment on their website. That’s right—this quick, easy, and free valuation has no strings attached. Knowing the true value of your business has never been easier!

What are you waiting for? Quiet Light is offering the best experience, strategies, and advice to make your exit successful. To learn more, go to quietlight.com, email [email protected], or call 800.746.5034 today.

Episode Transcript

Intro  0:07

Hi, folks, it’s the Quiet Light Podcast where we share relentlessly honest insights, actionable tips, and entrepreneurial stories that will help founders identify and reach their goals.

Joe Valley  0:29

Hey folks, Joe Valley here from the Quiet Light Podcast. Thanks for joining us again for another episode. As you know, the podcast is sponsored by Quiet Light. Yes. A place where online entrepreneurs turned into advisors like myself, I sold my business back in November of 2010. And then joined the team as have most of the members of the team. They’re all online entrepreneurs that are built, bought, sold their own online businesses and then join the team as well. Today’s episode is going to be a very special one. We have a very special guest, I want to say Izabela Hamilton, but my my friend Shawn, our friend Shawn from Ecomm Law Group tells me I must call her Bella. Hi, Bella, welcome to the show.

Izabela Hamilton  1:14

Thank you, Joe. Thank you. And you know, one good thing about Shawn is he knows how to connect people like when me and you met automatically. I saw the connection. I was like, yep, he’s my people. So we have Shawn to think

Joe Valley  1:28

for. So why don’t we just give a shout out to Shawn, look, folks, if you if you’re in the process of buying or selling an online business, and you need a great contract attorney, go to ecommlawgroup.com. Shawn is a good friend of both of ours and he knows his stuff inside and out used to work for a large corporate law firm many years ago, and decided to hang his own shingle and we’ve been working with him for probably four or five years now. And I would guess he’s probably either on the buy side or sell side of 40 to 50% of all of Quiet Light’s transactions. He’s got a great team behind him. Ecommlawgroup.com Go for it. And he’s a great guy to introduce great people like his hair, Izabela Hamilton, or Bella, I’m just gonna call you back because that’s what I call you anyway. So look, let’s talk about what you do for a living. I know that you’re Are you are unique in this Amazon ecommerce world, first and foremost, because you’re not the male gender. Unfortunately, there’s not enough women in this space. And you are changing that along with a lot of the folks that you work with. So kudos to you, thank you for coming on for that reason alone. But you do something that helps people rank their SKUs their aces on Amazon, as I think I read on your page, there is no page two on your website, right? There is no page two. Because if you’re on page two, it don’t mean a damn thing because you’re not making any money. Right. So tell us a little bit about what you do at RankBell. And what the heck is search find by?

Izabela Hamilton  3:03

Got it. Thank you so much, Joe. Yeah. So first and foremost, thank you for that beautiful, beautiful introduction. And, you know, I am actually a host of Branded By Women this year, brandedbywomen.com, and it’s a platform where we shine the light on on all these women. So when I first started about seven years ago, we I could count the women in the space on one hand, and it was a little bit frightening. It wasn’t that it was, you know, good or bad. It was just like, oh my god, like I felt alone at times. But I say this all the time. Most of the most of the knowledge that I have it is from them. So I have you know, I am very grateful. I learned from people like yourself, like Shawn, like everyone. And I love that. But it was frightening because I was like holy cow is just me and like another person and a button now on this platform. There’s going to be over 40 speakers this year, all women. So I love that this is expanding. And what we’re doing is not that we’re creating powerful women, it’s just that these women are starting to gain more confidence where they’re like, you know what, I can do this and I can be in front of a camera, I can be in front of a microphone, regardless of you know, making mistakes or whatever. And this is what I love beyond anything else. So coming back to RankBell, thank you so much for speaking so highly that I created RankBell because of the need of the help the sellers need because there’s just so many sellers coming on all the time. And they have this impression that because they have a wonderful product, they will be automatically selling which was true back in the day, but it’s no longer relevant today. Today to sell you have to have more than an amazing product. Would you agree Joe?

Joe Valley  4:54

Oh, no question and look, just to be clear, I do not have an Amazon seller account. I’m gonna ask you lots of dumb questions along the way. I’ve had one, but I don’t anymore. But what I can say is that folks with credibility, like Kevin King are talking about your services and how good they are. And they’re helping him. And Kevin, if you don’t know, folks runs, you know, the Billion Dollar Summit, he’s often been the host of the Helium 10 podcast, which I think the name of that has changed now to I don’t know what the name of it is, do you know the name?

Izabela Hamilton  5:27

Yes, there’s two. There’s the AM/PM Podcast. And the other one is like me on the spot, I want to

Joe Valley  5:34

say, like, I always put people on the spot, especially

Izabela Hamilton  5:39

to come back to this, and he’s going to kill me for this, because they’re really close friend, friends of mine, buddy, Kevin King is one of those brilliant minds who have who has been a a staple, really, and in this business, then people can look up to him for a lot of deep questions that not everybody knows. So thank you for giving him a shout out he is. He’s a brilliant man,

Joe Valley  6:03

well, and he uses your services. And he gives a nice testimonial about your services on your website. So why don’t we just quickly or as quickly as you can, I guess, define what the service is. And let’s call it search find by if that’s what it is, define what that means to people that don’t fully understand the place

Izabela Hamilton  6:20

or so, you know, we’ve decided to name and so simply because it’s exactly that, when, when everybody goes to Amazon, including me and you, we will go to the search bar and type in for the product that we’re looking for. So if I need sunscreen, now that is getting super nice here in California, I will go to Amazon and the search bar and type in sunscreen. And I will probably use either a main keyword which is sunscreen, or I will use what it’s called the longtail keyword sunscreen, SPF 40 Plus, right that’s already a longtail keyword. So when I do that Amazon will bring forward onto that first page, all the relative products that go with that keyword. So everybody who is ranking high for that keyword sunscreen will show up on the first page, which is why we say you know, usually people don’t go on page two or three or others because you know, first page, it just shows you that Amazon has already done all the work for you. And you don’t really have to think much about it. If Amazon put them on page one is for a reason. Whether is you know they they have the most sold items or they have the best pictures, the best reviews all of these combined, bring the product on page one to what we do at RankBell. Again, going back to that search find by you’re searching for the product, you find the sunscreen that you want, and then you buy it. So at RankBell, this is exactly the process that we use to help sellers get ahead of competition. So if you are bringing in your sunscreen today 2021 there’s already so many sellers that are selling probably the same sunscreen or you know different variations of it. But you have to show Amazon that you are worthy of being on page one. Because what happened is all these other sellers have proven to Amazon that you know they have a good product based on their reviews. based on you know, not too many returns, their pictures, their listing, everything is relevant to the keywords so they are on page one for a reason. Usually on page one, there are people who are already selling hundreds if not 1000s of products per day, you get if you’re coming onto Amazon and you’re selling zero, and on page one your competitors selling 1000 Amazon will always put the other guys first. Why? Because Amazon would like to make money. If you’re coming on and you provide zero sales. There’s no reason for Amazon to promote you. Now, when it comes to promoting a product. Amazon can promote you if you start using what it’s called PPC sponsored ads. So this is one way that sellers start selling on Amazon because you are on the last page. Nobody knows who the hell you are. You need to get some sales. How do you do that? You start sponsored ads. And the ranking campaign rainville provides but unfortunately not a lot of people know that such a service exists Of course within the Amazon community that we have like on Facebook and poskitt podcast A lot of people have heard of me, but this is just a very very small part of the Amazon seller community in general.

Joe Valley  9:45

And I think it’s I think it’s the the secret unknown part for the most part, right? Everybody knows about PPC take great photos have great you know, description and all this other stuff but what’s missing is getting to page one by not spending four And on sponsored ads, and your services help people do that, can you? Can you lay it out with step 123? What what you do I come to you, I’ve gotten a new Ace, and then I’m trying to launch it’s, you know, it’s it’s beautiful. It’s special. It’s unique, but it’s got, you know, next to nothing for reviews. How do I get on page one?

Izabela Hamilton  10:18

Yes. So a cell would come to me, let’s, let’s go back to the sense screen. So there, they come to me, they say, Izabela, I just launched this sunscreen, you know, I’m getting absolutely no sales. Nobody knows who I am, I am back on page 10. For the word sunscreen, would we would advise a new seller to do is use a tool that Helium 10 has. It’s called Cerebro. And the tool within that it’s called CPR. So what that does, it shows somebody how many sales you need per day to reach page one, depending on how competitive that keyword is. That is, you know how high that number will be. So for something like sunscreen, that’s a very competitive keyword, what you can do at that point, you can split it into that main keyword sunscreen, or you can use alternative keywords that are long tail keywords that don’t there are not still competitive. Because when you type in sunscreen, of course, you want to be the first one that shows up. But you can also rank for these other keywords that are not so competitive, but that will still help you. So you come to me you have this product you say is about I want to rank for the keyword sunscreen, and for the keyword sunscreen for toddlers, or a sunscreen for girls, you

Joe Valley  11:42

people wouldn’t How do you identify those keywords first,

Izabela Hamilton  11:44

um, you can do a reverse ASIN look up. All have these in, I met in Helium 10. Okay, I mentioned Helium, there’s different services out there. But Helium 10 is very known they, they’re just really, really good. I’ve been using them for years, and they have 30 accurate tools. Again, with Amazon, it’s hard to do zero and exactly what those numbers are. But it’s a good starting point. So if you have no idea what you’re doing, you can go to Helium 10, you can find out what your competitors are using, what keywords they are ranking for. And you can start with that. Unless you have a product that’s so unique that it’s impossible to find, then you would have to think yourself but right now, you know all the products that are selling on Amazon, there’s there’s a chance that you can pretty much find your keyword without having to go through all the

Joe Valley  12:37

Yeah, I was gonna say the fact that anything would be so unique is going to be so rare that it’s the exception rather than rule. So does I focus on, you know, the bigger picture where people are selling competed competitive products.

Izabela Hamilton  12:50

And this is what’s good about it. I mean, of course, we hate having competition. But at the same time having this competitors helps us help us and more more than one ways. I mean, it helps you find the keywords. But it also helps you find out what the other sellers have done wrong, that you can take and correct and make your product better, which is one of the things that will make your product stand out compared to the

Joe Valley  13:11

competition. So I’m going to use Cerebro, CPR, I’m going to come to you with how many sales I need a day on a particular keyword. And I’m going to reverse ASIN lookup to find those keywords. And that that will tell me with some level of accuracy, how many keywords I need, know how many, how many, how many sales, I need to be on page one

Izabela Hamilton  13:36

or day it will show you the other competitors are doing so for, you know a keyword like sunscreen, I mean, it’s probably huge. But just for an example, let’s say they’re doing 100 sales a day. So then you can understand that for you to get from zero to go from page 10 to page one, you are going to have to have close to that number of sales. So if you’re looking on page one position one, the competitor is doing 100 sales, the one below that is doing at the one below that is doing 60, the one below that is doing 40 you know where you can place yourself at. So if you want to do 100 sales a day, then you are going to be very competitive and drive 100 sales per day to match that. And again, you know how most people do it is they use PPC. But doing a PPC campaign on such a competitive product, you are going to pay a lot more than what they’re paying because you are coming in you again You do have to prove yourself. So you can do that. Or you can use you know RankBell or a service like it. You can even split it you can say I’ll do half PPC and I’ll do half you know a rent organic campaign. So you come to Rhinebeck and we figure out that number one is selling 100 a day. And now we have to figure out where do you want to be of course everybody wants to be on page one but on page one there’s different positions. If you Don’t want to, you know, get to 100 a date right now because you know, maybe your stock is limited, or maybe you don’t have enough money to maintain that, because it’s one thing to get on page one and start having 100 sales a day, if you don’t have the money to buy new stock coming in. So there’s all these other things that come in mind is just, you know, people say, Oh, I want to get on page one. But they completely forgot that there’s so many other factors. Once you get on page one, what that means,

Joe Valley  15:26

yeah, you don’t want to run out of inventory, and then lose all your rankings. But let me just jump to you said we can help you figure out so if I come to you, are you going to use one of the services, you’ll help me figure out how many sales I need through.

Izabela Hamilton  15:40

We know So usually, we would allow the sellers because who knows better than that the seller, you’ve probably done your homework. But however, if you are just You have no idea how to do it, we are there for you, we have access to Helium 10. On all our account specialists are trained we can we can help you we just we want the seller to have the last say in everything that we do. This is very important for us. But again, if you know what you’re doing, we’re here for you.

Joe Valley  16:07

For those that are confused so far. Let me just cut straight to the chase. You’re going to help me rank on page one, by using your network of buyers that will buy my products through their own seller accounts. And then give me a review or not give me a review. What are the no guidelines?

Izabela Hamilton  16:30

Just a few, a few steps? You will you want to get to the meat of it. I

Joe Valley  16:36

love to trade I do. Yes.

Izabela Hamilton  16:38

So you come to me when we figure out we’re like, okay, guy on position number one is doing 100 sales. Now we have to get to that level. Even if we don’t get to 100, maybe we have to get to 20 a day EPR will tell you to get on position one page one, you need 100 a day, well, we don’t have maybe enough money to get to page one up to position one because of the other factors. So now what RankBell does, once we decide that, let’s say we decided to get to 20 sales a day? Well we do, we use our own community that we’ve created over this past seven years of 1000s and 1000s of shoppers, these are real shoppers that buy on Amazon products that they want. So if I have, you know, a sudden a product such as sunscreen, I will advertise it to my buyers, and not everybody’s gonna want sunscreen just like not everybody wants, you know, has not everybody wants this or that they know what they want. And they will let us know. So if if we have 20 stills of sunscreen per day, I will advertise it and say cool out of these 1000s of people that I have, are interested in actually testing this product. And you know, people will sign up and say I do I do I do. So we get to 20 people a day, every single day, these 20 shoppers will type in the keyword that the seller gave us every single day. So now what we’re doing is we are getting the same amount of sales as the person on page one using my community of buyers. Because you know how I mean, we would like for every seller to be prepared when they launch on Amazon to have their own community, yeah, to create this ranking juice. But if they don’t have that they would come to RankBell and say I launched I need 20 people to buy my product every single day. So we will advise them on how to do it what to do, and also give us feedback on the product. So this has nothing to do with the reviews on Amazon, we don’t tell our buyers to leave a review at all. Sometimes they do. Because you know, maybe they like the product or, but we never incentivize that we never asked them to do that if they do that is solely on their own. Again, without us participating in it. We are only here to help sellers rank their products. Now when it comes to reviews, there’s different ways to to get those and we can discuss that later if you’d like.

Joe Valley  19:06

Okay, so assuming that we get to the fifth position, and now I’m selling 20 units a day. Or I’m while it’s it’s the reverse of that I’m selling 20 units a day and it gets me up to the fifth position on page one, I’m then going to have a natural bump because of people searching for that keyword and that 20 is going to go to 22 or 25 is there. Is there a transition period where if I’m slowly you know if I if I’ve got a budget to just get to 20 sales a day, do you typically say well, if you get to 20 a day and you’re ranking in position five, then you’re going to see an organic bump of people that searched for that keyword organically of 10% or 20%. Now I’m going to be at 22 or 26 or 28 sales a day. Do you have any stats on that?

Izabela Hamilton  19:50

And this is this is our goal. This is exactly what we’re trying to achieve though because we not only want people to get on page one, but we’re helping The word a brand accelerator, we’re giving them this book because once they’re on page one, as long as their product is amazing, which it is, because the you know, people work hard for it, we just need this help to get it in front of people. Once it’s in front of people, this is a natural occurrence. You are on page one people are noticing, wow. Okay, so this guy has better pictures, right? This guy has a better listing, Oh, I see. And the listing, they’re talking about all these other things the other competitors don’t. So that’s just what I why I said it’s so important to have competition, because first of all, you can go to their reviews, you can look at all the bad reviews that they have. This sunscreen is too thick, this sunscreen stays white on my skin. And you can take that and create your product better based on what the other competitors have done wrong. So when somebody like me is going to look for a sunscreen for my child, I’m going to say oh, well, this one, this review says that it’s too thick, and it’s too yucky, whatever, and I go to your product and your says this product is not thick, this product does not leave wide marks on you this and I’m like holy cow, of course, I’m gonna buy this one. Sure, just because you have all the other competitors, he will, it will show you what to do what’s right. So when you have this, together with the best pictures together with the best listing, automatically, you are going to attract those buyers who are buying from the competition. But there’s you a new guy in town, who is offering a much better product, competitive prices, you are already on page one, Amazon already promoted you to be on Patreon, you already have everything going for you. So now you’re on page one, what you want to do is continue ranking because you don’t want to just you know, do 20 sales every single day, then get to page one and do nothing. Because what happens naturally, if you don’t have those organic sales coming in, because it takes a while, then what happens you’re going to have less sales, Amazon’s gonna move you to page 234, so forth, because you are not again, and I use these words like worthy of but you know what I mean? You know, Amazon will say, Okay, this guy’s not making me money. Let me put on somebody else who’s doing better who’s doing more sales. So just because you got to pay to run does not mean your work is over, you still have to continue with your PPC. What do you want to do? And this is why I mentioned PPC a lot. Even though you know, it’s a service that, you know, some people say why would you advertise it, it’s like it’s almost competition for your service. But it’s really not it works together with. So you still want you want to own the real estate on that first page. You want to have the sponsored ad there. And you want to have your organic listing as well, because then what happens in people’s mind and subconscious is like, Oh, I see this guy everywhere. He must be really good. And what happens even with PVC, some people see that ad and they don’t even remember they saw it next time they go, they may even type in exactly the brand’s name because they remember seeing as so much. So having people see it’s very important. But also having that organic ranking is it’s better than then I can’t even explain in words. Because when you have these organic sales coming in, this is exactly what Amazon wants to see. Then the people that are in your network, are we giving them a coupon code a discount code?

Joe Valley  23:27

How does how does it work we

Izabela Hamilton  23:29

want them to be they are real. But we want them to go through the process themselves as they would buy it for themselves because they really are. So they would type in the word sunscreen, get to your product. Look at all the other products do because maybe you know this is not something they want. And you know, sometimes it happens they’re like, you know what, I don’t want this product like I see there is much better ones out there. We give them this freedom. We are not obligating them to do anything they don’t want to do. So if they see your sensory and they’re like, you know what, this is something I will try for my five year old, that’s fine. They will add it to their cart, they will they will buy it with their own Amazon credit card or their information that they have stored in Amazon. Once they do that every single day. At the end of the day. Let’s say we have 20 shoppers, we will rebate them through an E track company that’s super legit and vetted. We’ve been using them for a long time. Every single day. These buyers, they get the money back, they have no obligation again to do anything they don’t want. They’re participating in our testing testing program. And because of that, we are refunding them. We’re doing this as a fee. They’re doing a favor to us. We’re doing a favor to them.

Joe Valley  24:40

They’re getting the product for free just for testing.

Izabela Hamilton  24:43

No, no, no No promo codes and we do ask them to offer us feedback anytime they can. So let’s say you know the product. The sunscreen came in a box and it was just spilled all over. It’s something we want to know. So this is something We highly encourage them to tell us. And we take a full report of that. And we tell the seller and in many cases, we have say, we have saved, you know, hundreds and hundreds of products. Because what happens is, if this continues and your product, you know, had a bad shipment, you send it to Amazon, and then you have these actual buyers, you get the product to page one imagine, and now you’re having all these organic sales coming in. But every single time the product is destroyed, what happens is, those buyers are going to notify Amazon saying that your product is the worst, right? So what happens is Amazon will suspend you, they will suspend you first and ask questions later. So we don’t want that. When we use our community of buyers, we actually started RankBell as a quality control type of service before it went into ranking. So we still have that component very much on this company, we want them to tell us, hey, this product is spilling all over, or this product, you know, it’s not as good as we advertise. You know, remember how you said it wasn’t leaving my skin wide. While he does. And I was turning purple, what the hell. So we want them to tell us these very critical points. Because as a brand new seller, you may not always know everything, if you’re ordering something from China, as you are getting your first sample, that sample is going to be perfect, it’s going to be perfect. But when you put in your order of 1000 units or 2000 units, those units may not be as perfect, which is why I always highly encourage people do spend a few $100 to get an inspection company in China or whatever the country of origin is for your supplier. Use an inspector because even then, you know, sometimes things happen, but you will greatly reduce your, your possibility of, you know, getting in so much so much trouble. So there’s a million

Joe Valley  26:51

things that you’ve got to do to get it right.

Izabela Hamilton  26:53

So many things that, you know, even as a seasoned seller, I see it even after they sell for 5, 10 years, they tend to kind of realize themselves, or I’ve been working with the supplier for 10 years, they’re my buddies, they’re cool, I met their family. Sometimes what happens, Joe is they these suppliers, they get so big that now there’s sub contracting other suppliers. And this is when the the shipments tend to not be as good. So now you’re trusting the supplier that he’s going to do the best thing they can do for you. But really, they subcontract that somebody else probably for less lesser amount, and now your quality is going down. So it’s very crucial that doesn’t matter how many years you’ve been working with that supplier, always use an inspection company. And sorry, this was like a small,

Joe Valley  27:39

I go on tangents all the time, you have so much knowledge that you want to share it. So I completely and totally understand getting back to ranking services though RankBell your clients do they generally come to you and just simply stick with you because they know that they they need to do this for the next product and the next product and the next product or ASIN or variation, like do what is a typical client of yours, like, I guess is what I’m asking.

Izabela Hamilton  28:03

So I had a brand new one that’s never heard of us. And maybe a friend told them about us, they’ll come to us. And they don’t really understand what this is they’re like, What do you mean, I have to get my product away for free, I’m losing all this money, they’re thinking of it backwards. The way to think of this, it’s a marketing expense. So when you first launch your product, I would even encourage people to not expect a profit within the first year. And that’s very hard to hear for people because they expect to come onto Amazon, they probably saw some YouTube ad saying oh my god, you’re gonna chill on the beach, your lambos gonna wait for you. And it can be all that and I’ve seen that happen. But what they these people don’t advertise this, the time and the sweat that you have to put in. So you come in and you’re thinking, holy cow, I have to spend all this money on PPC, on ranking, I just bought a product, where are the winds, the winds will come if you stick with it. So you come in, and we give you this campaign of what you have to do. I want people to be prepared mentally. And this is very, very important. Be prepared that is going to take you a while to succeed to the level that you’re expecting. It’s a marketing expense.

Joe Valley  29:18

So how long does it take to get from next? It can take no no man’s land to to, you know, fifth ranked fifth position on page one, because it depends on how much somebody spends,

Izabela Hamilton  29:29

depending on the competition. I’ve seen your job from seven days to 30 days. But the best campaigns that you can possibly do is the long campaigns again, because you’re brand new, you’re coming onto this market, you have no idea what’s going on, but also who doesn’t have an idea what’s going on is Amazon. They are testing you. They’re checking on you. So the more information you you can offer them about your product, the better. So when you do a campaign of only seven days, whether it’s PPC or ranking, you want to show them more you want to show them Steady, steady, steady sales, steady PPC. So you want to do it as long as you can,

Joe Valley  30:06

and shouldn’t look at this as just a seven day campaign or a three week campaign, your best your best clients that are the most successful eight figure selling clients are doing it every single month. This is what they’re on every agent that they’ve got.

Izabela Hamilton  30:18

And I was getting to that, but it’s so hard for people to hear that oh, my God, is this for the rest of my life?

Joe Valley  30:23

Well, it takes a marketing budget Yes,

Izabela Hamilton  30:26

money to to make money. And I always say look at Coca Cola, like, have they ever stopped advertising? No, and I don’t think they ever will. And it goes the same. And I think people forgot that how hard it was to, you know, advertise back in the day. I mean, you wouldn’t have to get a spot on a TV commercial or a banner, or it was a lot. And now it’s very cheap. If you think about it, it’s quite cheap. We have Facebook ads, they’re very cheap. PPC is very cheap. Ranking campaign is very cheap, very cheap. Looking at the whole picture, it’s very cheap to become a millionaire today, because of all the resources that we have. Absolutely. So a typical client of mine would come in, and they will do a ranking campaign with me. And then they will redo it again, redo it again and continue on for a year. So very rare does the client ever leave, I mean, if they leave is because maybe they’ve moved on. And they’re doing something completely unrelated. That’s

Joe Valley  31:22

the piece I really wanted to know, which is you just said it very rarely does the client ever leave, obviously, the ranking services work. And if they go away, then they’ve got to spend more money on PPC or they’ve got enough organic ranking, but the competition is probably using similar services. So you got to fight fire the fire, it’s all

Izabela Hamilton  31:39

okay. So always, competition always comes. So even if it’s the old guys that were doing money, or the new ones coming in, you know, they may be doing something, they may drive PPC, whatever they’re doing, you always have to stay on top of your competition. So even for those who are doing, you know, 1000s of sales per day, they still come to me and say, Hey, I

Joe Valley  32:00

need a little boost. Sometimes they’re the ones that are most likely doing it, I would imagine because they’re smart, and they’re doing 1000s of sales a day. 100%.

Izabela Hamilton  32:07

And, you know, they’re, they know the value of this, though, they’re easier. Like, you know, I get wires of 50,000 100,000 easy every almost every single day, because they know the power of it. Of course, for somebody that is just starting out. They’re thinking, oh my god, $1,000 2000 I understand that I’ve been there, we’ve all been there. But when I see the difference between those people, and the ones who are just killing it, is this, like the fear factor is almost non existent because they know what it takes to make money.

Joe Valley  32:37

So they’re constantly updating the keywords that they’re searching for using and giving out to your audience, or I’ve heard the term super URL a number of times do they use super URLs and what

Izabela Hamilton  32:50

you don’t want to use the super URL, when you put them on the on the market with the with the sunscreen. Again, Amazon may put you on page nine or 10. Or you may not be able to be found at all, it happens more times than you think. Yeah, so now you’re in no man’s land, you’re nowhere to be found, then well, you want to do is use that super URL that has that hidden keyword. So you’re creating this super URL, you can use pixel phi or even Helium 10. Has, it’s called gems. It’s a create a super URL, you can create your super URL with the sunscreen keyword in it. And then we will use our buyers to click on that and ordered. So this will eventually bring forth that keyword. And let’s say now from nowhere, it’s on page eight. That’s good for us.

Joe Valley  33:37

Okay, so it’s not they’re not they’re not going to Amazon to search, they’re using a yes super URL that lands on the page. Alright, and what’s outside traffic for Amazon?

Izabela Hamilton  33:49

Correct. So as much juice as we can give to that link, it will signal to Amazon that there is a new key there is this keyword who is bringing in a new seller in. So if you do that for a day or two, then your product now can be organically researched for that term. So for sunscreen, if you type in sensory, you go to page nine, there is your product because we were able to bring it through with that super URL. Now that is there. We love that as long as we find out organically. This is when we can kick off the search find by campaigns, which is what we want to do.

Joe Valley  34:22

So somebody has to rank somewhere First, you have to find them on Amazon before you can do search.

Izabela Hamilton  34:27

Right and you can do it two ways you can do it the super URL, or you can do a PPC campaign when an exam with an exact term match. So you can you can use that keyword sunscreen to target it with the PPC campaign and there’s this two ways you can do it either way is good. Some people prefer one way over another. I’ve seen it work both ways. And I approve of both ways. There’s nothing wrong with that. But once it’s fine organically we want to switch right away to search my mind.

Joe Valley  34:58

Do you find your clients to new ones, not the eight figure sellers. But the new ones. Do you recommend one keyword to focus on? Or two or three or four or five? Is there a sweet spot that you’re, you know, giving advice,

Izabela Hamilton  35:09

you never want to do just one keyword, you know, you, you know, you want to have a well rounded campaign. So probably the best I would say is one main keyword and three longtail keywords. But if you don’t have enough money to invest in a main keyword again, because that can be, you know, quite expensive, not only for PPC, but for a ranking campaign, because

Joe Valley  35:31

What’s your definition of quite expensive?

Izabela Hamilton  35:33

So for sunscreen, if we were to look at CPR right now, I am sure that the sales per day are at least 500 or 1000. So what does that translate to a brand new seller come in? They have a limit of 200 there’s no way they can do 500 sales a day impossible, even if they want to, because

Joe Valley  35:49

the inventory for that, and then they’re given, they’re given, essentially, they’re giving that product away. So that’s a cost of goods sold. It’s a marketing expense for them. And then there’s a service fee on top of that

Izabela Hamilton  35:59

correct which that money actually, you know, comes back to the seller minus you know, the Amazon fees and all that because it is a sale it’s essentially

Joe Valley  36:09

Okay, yeah, okay, that’s true. Sure.

Izabela Hamilton  36:11

Yeah, they will get that money back

Joe Valley  36:13

multiple one main keyword other lesser known keywords, what about tweaking the campaign a time have done any, you know, writing on ad copy, I find that it works, okay, but then have to tweak it a little bit, do you find that you’ve got keywords and longtail keywords, and you have to tweak them a little bit over time.

Izabela Hamilton  36:31

Sometimes, you know, if we’re doing a campaign and you know, we’re really struggling for with a keyword somehow it’s not picking up or it’s not driving any sales, then sometimes we do have to cut them. And we’re like, you know what this keyword is just, it’s really not doing anything that we will switch to another keyword and sellers usually can tell right away, like if we’re doing a campaign of two weeks, and within the next three, four days, you’re, you’re pretty much able to tell if that keyword is going to soccer now. But usually, you know, every single keyword that we use is going to drive some ranking juice towards the main keyword, which is what we want. So even if we’re not targeting the keyword sunscreen, but we’re targeting sunscreen for toddlers, sunscreen for baby girls sensory free for all these, just by hitting those longtail keywords are going to drive some juice to this main one, because we still have that root keyword in it. So slowly. So instead of doing 500 units for this, we’re doing maybe five a day for these ones. And this one gets hit to right here, which is the beauty of a organic ranking campaign. So just because again, you don’t have the stock or the money to do this main keyword does not mean all hope is lost. No, it just means going to because what you want to do you still want to own the real estate. So what if it’s for a lower search volume keyword? That’s fine. Yeah, you’re still gonna get the sales? Yeah, you’re not gonna get the motherlode of 1000 units per day. But if you think about it, most sellers again, they’re not ready for 1000 sales a day. They’re not they think they are they all want to make the millions. But then they get to page one, and they’re like Izabela, you’re not gonna believe it. I’m like, What? You’re out of stuff. Yes. Right. Yeah. You just have

Joe Valley  38:16

a question here. And this is just theoretical. Okay. Let’s say you’re in a room, you’re at an event, just you and 100 8-figure sellers. Okay, you got the picture. They’re all doing more than 10 million a year in revenue. What percentage of those sellers are using services like yours?

Izabela Hamilton  38:37

99%.

Joe Valley  38:39

Okay, folks, 99% of the eight figure sellers.

Izabela Hamilton  38:44

You listen to this.

Joe Valley  38:47

So now let me ask you a follow up question to that 99% that was guessing are using services like this when they’re eight figure sellers or to get to eight figure sellers become eight figure sellers, and then they don’t stop. Now in that same room, you’ve got 100 8-figure sellers, what percentage of those will admit that they’re using services like yours?

Izabela Hamilton  39:13

10%. Then why? Because one, I think, a lot of pride. And I didn’t know I was going to be on a spot today. And we I’ve never in my life ever talked about this and because, you know, sellers, you know very confined to me, and that’s why I never even mentioned who I’m

Joe Valley  39:34

mentioning any names now I get it. I get what I’m trying to do here is to get the message across to the people that are not connected with those eight philosophical eight figure sellers like you and I are the truth of how they get there. Yeah, right. And it’s okay. It is there. It is it. Okay, so it’s the 10% I’m going to admit it because

Izabela Hamilton  39:57

I think personally I think one is pride. You know, everybody wants to say, um, you know, I build this a finger company, on my powers in which, you know, I give them a lot of credit they did, but it’s that pride of like, you know what, I’ve never used the service and my product is just that good. And, you know, hats off to them. But there’s no way in this world, your product is that good, that it just automatically flies off the shelf, I am sorry, I’m sorry. That is just not it. And, and then the other ones, you know, they don’t want to be seen as you know, you know, abusing services. It’s just in some people are just secretive. And that’s fine, you know, that maybe they don’t want other people to know that they’re successful. Like, as you walk into a conference, and you cannot even tell sometimes, like who the eight and nine figure sellers are, and you will just think they’re just nobodies. They’re quiet, they don’t really speak to anybody, you know,

Joe Valley  40:53

let’s, let’s jump to I mean, they they made only 10% may admit it because of pride or ego or because they don’t want you to know, because they don’t want you to compete with them. They keep that close to the vest with them. And they’re their closest friends. Now, let’s talk about you know, the, the elephant in the room, which is Amazon. Is this something that people should be worried about in terms of terms of services with Amazon? Is it is it okay? Is? Are there ways to do it properly? Or are there firms like yours that cross the line that are definitely doing it wrong? And you should? Look, how do you look for those firms that are, you know, doing it wrong, and gonna cause a problem for you in the long run?

Izabela Hamilton  41:33

Well, one thing you want to look for, is somebody behind the company. So when people think RankBell, they automatically think Izabela or vice versa, they think is about they think RankBell. So you always want to make sure that you’re using somebody reputable that you know, people have used and they trust. So when it comes to services like this, you can almost cross the line very, very fast. And you don’t want to do that. So the rebaiting has been part of American culture for many, many years in Romania, where I’m from, we don’t have this. We really don’t so even took me a while to get used to this idea of like receiving free stuff. And is this even Okay, like? Are you giving me this free thing? What’s behind it? What What do you want? So what I noticed here in this country is it’s very much legal, and it’s very much look forward to

Joe Valley  42:23

your accent, your accent, got me there? Did you say very much legal or ill legal?

Izabela Hamilton  42:29

legal? It’s very clear,

Joe Valley  42:31

I just wanted to clear make sure people understood that

Izabela Hamilton  42:34

you can go to like big, big stores like Best Buy. And I think even now they have this rebate, coupons that you can still care. And you can mail in. So it has been part of the culture. So rebaiting, it’s okay. Now, where you cross the line is when you do a campaign yourself, let’s say with the money trap, because this is very popular right now, in Facebook, and you are sending a person the product. And next thing you know, you say, Hey, you know, remember when I send you that product, now you own me, you have to give me a review, this is crossing the line, this is a guest DLS you never want to do that there is ways to get reviews in a very perfect way. And you know, we can talk on another episode, my preferred method is Instagram, using influencers doing a lot of shout outs doing a lot of Giveaways on Instagram and platforms such as, but I would never go to an Amazon buyer and say, I gave you this product that’s $20 now You owe me Give me a review. This is crossing the line. So if you are typing on Google, how to get reviews on Amazon, and you come across a company that has no name has no, you know, the contact form, it’s like, you know, they’ll contact you whenever they want. I wouldn’t necessarily trust it. And there’s a lot there’s like all these like zoom services coming on and there’s like all these and you’re like a multitude of services, but always make sure that that source is reputable. So well the way we actually grew, we’ve never done an ads but like you can, you can type in RankBell and you’d never see a sponsored ad from us. All our clients have come from other clients. And it’s because we understand the importance of referrals. I if like Joe if you’re using my service, I know you will tell somebody else about about us and so forth and so forth. So you want to make sure that you use a company that has been around that there know what they’re doing because your Amazon store can be your empire and will be I mean look at you know, all the aggregators look at all the you know, brokerages and all these like, everybody’s here to help you win in the end. So I want people to really think their brands, seriously. It’s not a hobby, it’s not a get rich scheme that you you know, you make 500 bucks a month extra you can go out with your buddies, no, this can be an empire and that you leave for your kids. This can be huge and I want people to take this seriously. So when you Do something so seriously, you want to make sure that you are using reputable sources.

Joe Valley  45:05

Sure. Bella there said something there that just sticks with me and that, you know, different these different people that are helping the Amazon seller, they do want to help you win. And in your case, if you’re helping somebody win, this is the thing, folks, it’s not it’s never a one way street, it’s a two way street. If Bella is helping you rank and helping you win, guess what, you’re going to keep using those services, someday, you’re gonna have a big win, and exit your business and Quiet Light going to help you understand that process along the way, I just did a I just did a podcast with our friend Steven Pope from My Amazon Guy talking about how to negotiate with aggregators. If you decide you’ve got this and you want to do it on your own, I give all the information away for free on what they’re looking for how to negotiate with them, what the pitfalls are, and things of that nature. When people are helping you first, they’re the ones you definitely want to do business with, because they’re going to help you win. And that’s going to come back around to you. And as you say, Bella, it’s going to potentially affect the next generation of your family, because this is what you’re doing today, running this business is probably your most valuable asset. And you’re going to make the most money from that by holding it forever, and passing it on to your heirs or selling it right. Especially if you’re selling in the first five years, you’re gonna make more money in the sale, then you are actually operating the business because as Bill just said, a few minutes ago, odds are you’re not making any money in the first 12 months. In the second 12 months, you might start to make some in the third a little bit more, but your business is worth a lot more in the exit, then you’ve got some money in the bank, you’re not bootstrapping the next launch, the next product is much the next brand is much and you’ll have relationships with people like Bella, to help you get where you need to go faster, which I think is the key. And I I’m thinking of a title for this podcast. I don’t know if I can squeeze it in, folks. But it’s something to the tune of 99% of eight figure sellers do this, but only 10% will admit it.

Izabela Hamilton  46:58

Oh my god, that will be though that will definitely be a catchy title. And again, you know, I’m not the one to start controversies or starting any fights, I apologize. I don’t mean to offend anybody. But also, I think it’s very important for people to know that it takes a lot to become a 7, 8, 9 figure seller. And, you know, if you did it by yourself, if you’re listening to this, and you’ve never used this service, please send me a message. And I will forever give you free promotions for at least for the next five years. Okay, if you did this by yourself what

Joe Valley  47:33

she did there, folks, she got really nervous because she was gonna give you forever free promotions. And then I was like, you know, what are your limit?

Izabela Hamilton  47:39

Because, you know, what if I sell rank? Well, there you go.

Joe Valley  47:43

There you go.

Izabela Hamilton  47:44

I don’t want to give that promise to the next owner. But no, I’m serious. If you did this, like I would like to hear about how you achieve that. Because then you will be a unicorn and I would love to have a full on conversation and interview.

Joe Valley  48:00

Very special. Though, how do folks find out about RankBell? And how do they reach you individually?

Izabela Hamilton  48:07

rankbell.com but I am also very, very visible and very social on Facebook. I’m always there. I have a podcast that I host every Mondays every Monday and yeah, so it’s

Joe Valley  48:23

a Monday podcast.

Izabela Hamilton  48:24

It’s so it’s Danny McMillan. Oh, that is called Seller Sessions. And it’s every Monday 8am Pacific Standard. Yep. And it’s amazing. I bring on brilliant people. And I hope to have you.

Joe Valley  48:38

Well, I look forward to it. So we’re Seller Sessions and also Branded By Women, as well. How often are you doing that? Well, that’s just brandedbywomen.com.

Izabela Hamilton  48:47

Yeah, brandedbywomen.com. Get your free ticket. It’s a once a year. I hosted it last year and this year. And yeah, we were super super excited because of all the power houses that we’re going to host this year. So it’s very exciting time.

Joe Valley  49:02

All right, folks, RankBell. Facebook Izabela Hamilton, Seller Sessions, brandedbywomen.com do all of these things. If you want to become a 10 figure seller learn for is about people again, like Kevin King who teaches people that are doing eight figures. They go to Kevin for advice. And Kevin really recommends Bella and of course, she’s friends with Shawn Hussain from again, wrapping it back up to a car lager. He made the introduction. He’s a heck of a guy. I’m sure you love it. He’s a good guy, for sure. And he’s friends with everybody you should know like, she is amazing guy and remote. He’s a good friend of ours as well. Anyway. Well, I thank you for your advice. Thank you for your guidance. Thank you for your wisdom. appreciate it very much. Look forward to having you back on again Sunday show

Izabela Hamilton  49:51

anytime. Thank you. So

Outro  49:55

Today’s podcast was produced by Rise25 and the Quiet Light content team. If you have a suggestion for a future podcast subject or guest, email us at [email protected]. Be sure to follow us on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next week.