Tips From an EXITpreneur Who’s Sold $150M in Products

Fernando Campos is the Co-founder of MarketplaceOps, a leading Amazon strategy firm that delivers growth to best-in-class CPG brands. His agency leverages fully-integrated technology and proprietary ranking techniques to beat out the competition. Prior to founding MarketplaceOps, Fernando came from the tech industry, where as Head of Sales he helped his company secure over $30M in venture funding and scale to over 80 employees. Fernando is a Member of YPO, an Investor at KOS Naturals, Partner at Seller Tradecraft, and Co-founder of Pixelfy Amazon.

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

• [03:09] Fernando Campos explains the fast-growing consumer space and catering to the consumer journey
• [06:57] How to boost your ranking and indexation on Amazon through influencer marketing
• [11:23] Fernando talks about exiting his supplement brand
• [16:23] Why analytics and a differentiated offering are useful for evaluating data
• [23:19] Fernando discusses how adding specific keywords can scale your product
• [26:47] How can you optimize your click-through rate?
• [31:12] Fernando details how to search the Seller Central in Amazon for higher conversion rates
• [38:49] Why an exceptional talent acquisition team is crucial for your brand’s growth

In this episode…

Are you an Amazon seller who wants to scale faster and more efficiently, but you’re not sure where to start? With the saturated market of product listings, is it possible to rise above the competition?

The first step is product differentiation. Fernando Campos says that you want to quantify the volume and brand analytics of Amazon to work in your favor. When it comes to ensuring your product and brand have depth and are seen as leaders, you need to execute three things:  examine the total addressable market, differentiate the packaging, and visualize your product in search results.

In this episode of the Quiet Light Podcast, Joe Valley sits down with Fernando Campos, Co-founder of MarketplaceOps, to talk about marketplace strategy and management on Amazon. Fernando discusses how influencer marketing can help boost your products, how differentiated keywords can optimize your click-through rate, and a detailed explanation of the Amazon Seller Central.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Fernando Campos on LinkedIn
• Fernando Campos’ email: [email protected]
• MarketplaceOps
• Quiet Light
• Quiet Light on YouTube
• Joe Valley
• Mark Daoust
• Chris Guthrie
• Quiet Light Podcast email: [email protected]
• The EXITpreneur’s Playbook: How to Sell Your Online Business for Top Dollar by Reverse Engineering Your Pathway to Success by Joe Valley
• Free Copy of The EXITpreneur’s Playbook  
• PickFu
• “The Best Sources for Philippine VAs With John Jonas” on the Quiet Light Podcast

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  0:32

Hey, folks, Joe Valley here. Thanks for joining me for another episode of the Quiet Light Podcast. Today, I’m talking to Fernando Campos from MarketplaceOps. Fernando’s a pretty special guy over the last seven years, he’s scaled to selling over $150 million on Amazon. He’s got a total of 75, full time remote employees. And he, in this interview, we’re talking about a number of things. First of all, how do you sell $150 million on Amazon? What are the top three to five things that people must do in order to, you know, get traction and move ahead. And then we touched on some of the key features inside of Seller Central, that are there to help you that some people don’t even know are there and don’t necessarily use. And then we talked again, in general about the key things to look for in a remote worker and how to treat them well. And how to expand to make sure that they’re gonna stick around for the long term and help you grow your business. It’s all fascinating stuff. Fernando, a really smart guy gives away a lot of great information here on the podcast. Before we jump there, I want to give a shout out to TheEXITpreneur’s Playbook. Yes, folks, you hear me talking about it more these days than ever before, we want to give away 10,000 digital copies of The EXITpreneur’s Playbook in the next 12 months. If you don’t have your copy yet, or your friends in your Facebook group or your mastermind don’t have a copy yet, please go to EXITpreneur.io/QLpod. And you’ll be able to download a free digital version of The EXITpreneur’s Playbook. Spread the word share that you are wherever you can place. Alright, here we go. Let’s go talk to Fernando Campos. Here we go. Fernando, welcome to the Quiet Light Podcast. How are you man? I’m good. Thanks

Fernando Campos  2:23

so much for having me, Joe.

Joe Valley  2:25

My pleasure. We’ve known each other quite a while and I could sort of give a background on yourself to the audience because we’ve been talking since 2016 or 17. And you’re also a former Quiet Light client you sold the business through quite like using Chris Guthrie. But rather than me do that, why don’t you give the audience a little bit of background on who you are what you’ve been up to that type of thing? Yeah,

Fernando Campos  2:50

thanks so much. Sure. I see. Yeah, my name is Fernando Campos, I’ve been selling on Amazon since 2014. Since then, until now, we’ve sold about 150 million on the platform between our own brands, and then a lot of our clients. So I’m one of the partners in marketplace ops. And what we do currently is we help a lot of like fast growing consumer brands scale on the platform. And yeah, I mean, we’ve done everything in this space. But yeah, we have a now a team, a global team of about 75 people that are all just like, hyper specialized in everything. And

Joe Valley  3:28

I love how casually you said, Yeah, you know, we’ve sold about 150 million since 2014, or 15. That’s a lot of money, man. That’s, that’s a pretty impressive number. So good for you. I know that you’ve been an exit printer, if you will, you’ve sold your business. And now you’re, you’ve taken your experience and you’ve built this agency called marketplace ops. But but let’s we’re gonna bounce around here a bit. What with your experience in selling now and 2022 versus 2014 and 15 You’ve seen a lot of changes on Amazon, and Facebook on all the algorithm updates and everything. Where do you see e-commerce in general and Amazon specifically going in the next let’s just say two to five years because the next two years might be a recession five years out? What’s what’s what’s different now versus what you think is going to happen in the future? Yeah,

Fernando Campos  4:28

it’s a great question. Yeah, I mean, I think things are just changing at a at a faster faster rate. You know, in the past, you could get away with companies like need to products like just a normal like private label item, you know, sub $2 cogs and you know, listed on Amazon, get a few reviews and it would do really well. I think now, sellers are forced to be more disciplined in a variety of ways, one in terms of like their product quality and product selection. Really just do it. I’m having more differentiating offers, versus just like slapping a label and then putting it up. I think it also forces brand owners to really start thinking more about the customer journey, like, what, what the brand identity is like, what does it actually like represent? And I think it’s going to increasingly, over time require brand owners to actually be on the channel. I think in the past, you could just build this like Amazon native brand. I mean, you still can for sure, today, if you have like the right team, and like the right understanding of how the skill set of being able to execute, but I think as you’re kind of looking at, yeah, three to five year horizon, I do think that it’s just going to require more like social media following paid ads, like, you know, marketing, things that you didn’t necessarily have to do before building an Amazon native brand, but I think will be pretty much a requirement as you kind of look at the later half of that timeline.

Joe Valley  6:06

So it’s, it’s harder to launch a brand on Amazon. But those that do it and are successful, it sounds like they’re building a more stable business because of doing a better job with building a real brand and then going omni channel and driving traffic to it through social media, things of that nature. Does that make it by the way easier to launch new products and new skews when you’ve got other channels to launch to? like social media, giving a new product SKU to your audience to take a look at with the Amazon link? Is that making it easier to launch?

Fernando Campos  6:43

Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, if you have a lot of like, branded search, like if you’re doing a lot of paid ads, or let’s say like a lot of like influencer marketing, it can absolutely, like, really, really help. Your ranking and indexation on Amazon. You know, what, like, a lot of this kind of reports that I’ve seen is that for every dollar of ad spend, like unpaid social media, like Facebook or Google ads, you’ll see about a 25% lift of like, dollar, you know, so 25 cents in sales, for every dollar that you spend on ads on the Amazon platform, even if you are directing people to Shopify, just because so many consumers are used to purchasing

Joe Valley  7:26

on Amazon. The same, I do the same. If I see a product on somebody’s website, first thing I’ll do is can I just buy that on Amazon, I know to get here tomorrow, if I do that, or I have a fulfillment center, about 30 minutes from where I live, Fernando. So it’s often here the same day. So when I’m that guy, that’s gonna go ahead and just get it on Amazon. So it’s easier to return, as well. Totally. That’s called the halo effect, right? So if you’re advertising on different platforms, you’re gonna get a lift, you know, on Amazon, simply because guys like me are gonna go ahead and and shop over on Amazon. So make sense to even even if you’re just breaking even on Facebook, you’re probably you know, that’s that’s a lofty goal, right? It’s an acceptable though, I would think, because you’re gonna get, you know, a 25% left over there on Amazon. Totally. And

Fernando Campos  8:13

especially with everything changing kind of with by with prime right now, since they just did the official like release recently. I think it’s just gonna become even more intertwined between having Amazon and like your direct Shopify.

Joe Valley  8:27

I’ve always been a Prime member, what is what is this new release? By with prime? What is that about?

Fernando Campos  8:32

Yeah, good question. So you know, some of you are on a on a on a normal, like e-commerce site, so not on Amazon. And then you see this little Like button, like with Amazon pay. And so before that was just, basically, yeah, I guess Amazon’s payment, like, it’s basically their payment gateway, allowing you to use your address and credit card that saved their Amazon Prime account. But now, with biotech prime, it’s really cool, where they’re adding in the fulfillment functionality to that payment gateway. So now, it’ll actually ship from FBA, you still have like, to your point, like the return functionality. And so basically, what they’re really saying is now you’re going to have pretty much the entire FBA experience, but in terms of like the payments, and the fulfillment on on any random like Shopify website if they buy with prime seller,

Joe Valley  9:28

right, and I think that that app only works on Amazon and WooCommerce. At this point is is that right? Are you not sure?

Fernando Campos  9:36

I’m pretty sure it’s actually on Shopify now to I’m sorry,

Joe Valley  9:39

what did I say? Yeah, I meant Shopify is the primary one and WooCommerce as well, I, I don’t think it would work for somebody that’s got a WordPress site or something like that. As far as like Karatbars as far as I’ve been told. Yeah, okay. So omni channel. Yeah, I agree that shop with prime or buy with prime button would make a whole lot of sense for folks. Did you do Do that for any of your brands that you ran and operated? I guess you’re still running one, right? You launched a supplement business in 20. Just Just earlier this year, right.

Fernando Campos  10:10

We launched it. And we launched a few in 2020. But by with prime is just just like released like publicly, I think maybe yesterday, actually. But yeah, so it’s a brand brand new like program. I think there was a few, like, few brands and that kind of the beta. But yeah, we have we haven’t tested it yet on Shopify,

Joe Valley  10:32

yesterday would be a month or so guys, because this isn’t going to air a month or so. So BIOS primer is out there as an option for you to take a look at. Very cool, very cool. When you decided to exit your own business. I remember you reaching out and we chatted with together. And then Chris Guthrie took the lead on that. What was the motivation for exiting that business? How long had you operate it? And why did you want to move on?

Fernando Campos  11:00

Yeah, it’s a good question. At the time, we were we were really excited about supplements, brands. And so we we thought that it would be a better situation. We we’ve grown the brands a lot, but we wanted to really focus on what we’re doing and supplements. And so we thought it made sense to sell, sell off the brands, take some cash off the table, and then be able to redeploy some of the the Delta in terms of into those supplement brands to scale it a lot faster. And yeah, I mean, oh, good.

Joe Valley  11:38

And is that that supplement brand? Is it primarily an Amazon brand? Currently, yeah.

Fernando Campos  11:44

But yeah, we’re starting to move it more into direct to consumer. But yeah, right now, a huge majority of revenue still Amazon, our bread and butter, for

Joe Valley  11:50

sure. So when you’re talking to marketplace, op clients, are you? Are you demonstrating your supplement brand and things of that nature and showing results in terms of testing that you’ve done? Is it kind of a guinea pig to test new things along with, you know, building your own brand? Totally?

Fernando Campos  12:09

Yeah, it’s a great question. So I mean, we think of it as kind of a flywheel of knowledge, like around Amazon. So naturally, we’ll test strategies that we come up with on our own on our brands, with our clients, sometimes, you know, a client might have a, you know, an interesting idea, or maybe they have like a crazy budget, because they’re venture backed, and they’re like, hey, you know, we want to spend 75 grand on each launch, which, you know, most Amazon sellers would never do. And so it kind of challenges our team and us to think more creatively about like, Okay, well, how can we use this? And how can we? How can we think bigger? And so? Yeah, I would say like the the knowledge is kind of a flywheel in terms of like, things that we’re we’re testing on our own brands, obviously, in a way more competitive category, like supplements. And then we’re applying a lot of those same tactics that we’re using in in various categories where our clients compete. Okay.

Joe Valley  13:07

Let’s talk just basic tips, you know, to the audience, because, again, you’ve sold $150 million worth of products on Amazon, what are like the top five things that somebody must do at a minimum to succeed on Amazon? Yeah, it’s

Fernando Campos  13:26

a good question. Okay. So I think the first one definitely is is product differentiation, I think, you know, and it really just thinking about like, searching your main keywords like the unbranded keywords on Amazon. And the reason that you’re looking for unbranded keywords is like you’re looking for what are like going back to supplements you’re looking for like to market capsules, right? And so you don’t have a specific brand in mind. And the reason that’s important is that 78% of search on Amazon is unbranded. And so yeah, I use that actually, as my first like tip is really thinking about, like, what are the unbranded keywords that you’re going to be really relevant for, and ensuring that there’s, there’s volume there, you can use a bunch of different tools out there, to kind of quantify that volume and brand analytics that Amazon released last year, it’s also really helpful, but just making sure that there’s a good amount of like depth in terms of keywords in terms of the actual volume and breadth as well. So there’s, it’s not just like three keywords.

Joe Valley  14:37

Is that is that is that? You do that before you decide what product category you’re gonna go into? Or you use those keywords in the seller account to help get your rankings up.

Fernando Campos  14:53

Yeah, good question. So yeah, if we’re, if we’re evaluating client to take on Um, that maybe hasn’t sold on Amazon before, but maybe they’re doing really well on direct to consumer, we will absolutely look at those keywords before taking them on and determine, like it does this make sense? Like for instance, you know, we got pitched this brand really cool brand. They’re doing like a mouth spray with adaptogen. And so it’s kind of like, yeah, I guess like a breath mint kind of spread. And what it’s a really cool, very, like innovative product. Yeah, people like very people, very few people are looking for mouth spray. And really, no one’s looking for mouth spray, specifically with adaptogens. And so because that market is so small, and I am on Amazon, assume you hard to break even into really fine like new to commute a brand or new, like new customers. And so it’s just not the best bit, a lot of people kind of back into those numbers by using like a helium 10 To look at revenue. But yeah, for us, like we’re looking for those kind of unbranded keywords, because that you’re really relevant for so that we can determine like, okay, yeah, we can get you to rank and then therefore, you’ll, you’ll drive sales because you have a good offering. And so that kind of moves into like, I guess, the second tip is just having a really differentiated offering. And in whether that’s like you’re killing it with like another accessory that makes sense, you’re changing up the product a little bit so that it’s a little bit better, a little bit more useful, a bit more durable, even, like simple way to differentiate, like, if everybody else is selling a one pack, but it makes sense to you’re gonna buy multiple to putting it into like a two pack or a three pack. And then you know, providing a slight discount to the customer for doing that. Those are all like, great, easy ways that like differentiating, but is yeah, just really, really important. Because I think, you know, there’s diminishing returns of having like, the ad, whatever, like barbecue girl gloves on Amazon, right? You’re not going to show up on the front page, especially if everybody else has, you know, 10,000 reviews, that you’re not giving the customer any incentive to actually purchase yours.

Joe Valley  17:18

And make sense. To Can we go back to number one? Oh, yeah. How do you how do you determine if there’s enough generic keyword search available to make it a big enough product? What tools do you use? How do you look at that?

Fernando Campos  17:34

Yeah, that’s a great question. So yeah, there’s a bunch of different tools. e-commerce analytics is awesome. Helium 10 is awesome. Brian analytics. And so we’ll we’ll look at all of those tools for different reasons. But yeah, I, I love all those. Yeah, they’re in different price ranges, Brent Analytics is free as long as you’re brand registry, and then and then Helium 10. Every, like wheezing, everybody has them. So yeah, it’s also very, very, very helpful in terms of estimating monthly volume, the way that we’re looking at it is, yeah, so let’s, let’s just say like going back to, like, let’s say the, the tumor category. So if you’re saying Tumeric supplement, like, you’re, you’re pretty relevant, right? But that doesn’t necessarily distinguish whether it’s a liquid capsules, powder, like, it could be a variety of things. So you should, in theory, like, wait that a little bit lower, in terms of, you’re not gonna be able to capture everything, right. And again, it’s a really competitive category. So you know, that you’re going against competitors, with 10s of 1000s of reviews. But in then, if you if you’re trying to sell like, let’s say, a liquid, a turmeric, liquid, and then you’re looking at the turmeric, liquid keyword, then the euro, really, really relevant for that, for that specific you weren’t, and so you can add weights if you want to, but you’re basically kind of trying to try to figure out what is, you know, like, similar to like, a, like, a starter is like, what is the addressable market, the total addressable market of this, this category that I’m going into? And so that’s kind of how we’re thinking about it. And then it’s like, okay, well, turmeric also has like, anti inflammatory properties as well. So like, what are they? What are the keywords in there? Do we like what other ingredients are there? We’re going to be competing with do we want to add that to the total addressable market, but and then so the idea is that we’re we’re kind of evaluating like, Okay, how, how sophisticated is competition here? How can we really like differentiate its offer and how many different keywords are going to be highly relevant for that Amazon’s are wanted to display this product there. And then that, I think he’s kind of what how we’re looking at it and then we’re in a we’re evaluating data against the revenue that the top sellers are to make sure that it kind of hits the revenue thresholds that we’re going after.

Joe Valley  20:00

Okay, okay, thanks. Appreciate going back to number one. Number two was differentiating the packaging, onesies, twosies threes is something different than what the competition is offering. I’m gonna guess number three is product images and quality of photos and things of that nature. But I could be dead wrong, what would number three be in your opinion? Ah,

Fernando Campos  20:22

yeah, that’s a good question. I would say it’s a version of that. But I would say number three for me would be like, visualizing your product in the search results page. And then so it’s tied to the main image, like you’re saying, but it’s like, what will my product look like against everybody else? And then, so if it’s like a two pack, and everyone else is selling a one pack, it’s clearly clearly different, right? But if let’s say you’re, again, going back to the barbecue grill gloves, and it’s like, okay, I’m selling another red pair, everybody, like, everybody here is either red or black or orange, then like, it’s not really that differentiated. And it’s gonna be hard to really determine like to establish like quality differences or anything else. And so what we’re kind of just constantly thinking about is like, okay, especially with things moving more towards mobile, you have this like little square to display to get people to click your product over everybody else’s. And like, what can we do to the product, even before we place the order, but to like, really make sure that like the merchandising, and, and just how we’re going to display that main image is going to make it so much clearer without reading the title, that this product is better than everyone else. That’s like an incumbent incumbent competitor.

Joe Valley  21:51

It’s, you know, as you’re talking, I’m looking at Amazon and turmeric. And the images are pretty, pretty solid, most of them are pretty good. But there’s a few darker labels where the word Tumeric doesn’t stand out, and the capsules can’t be seen and things of that nature. And people are doing what you’re talking about, you know, a bottle and then the box that it would come in and then two to pack two bottle option three bottle option, things of that nature. Totally what you know. So the image is really important, all of these guys on that first image, they’re just showing a product shot which is I suppose, what’s necessary. Second thing to look at from a consumer standpoint is of course the reviews but you can’t control that when you’re first starting out. Exactly. How do you get traction against I mean, the top the top result for to America’s winner this Schwartz bio has 77,504 reviews, how do you how do you make the decision I want to go into that category and compete with somebody like that and then how do you get the reviews? How do you get traction? How do you get going and build that? Yeah,

Fernando Campos  23:05

it’s a great question. I mean, yeah, to your point is that you need to really come up with something that’s very very like different Yeah, and so for that specific category what we did was we added in other specific keywords that also had the same benefits as Tumeric which is like you know, again, the anti inflammatory like benefit and so we added garlic we added bio prin for for absorption we added other things Yeah, that yeah, basically would make it very differentiated and a better offer than what everyone else is offering we added more milligrams, and we really like highlight that like really clearly and in the main image and on the label of the supplement and so then when you’re kind of scrolling through like you just see like a very differentiated offer you you can see it probably there but yeah, I think that’s a lot of what we do I think what yeah, if you look at other examples throughout you did a really great job with their brand angry orange, where like they’re kind of in the pet deodorant spray space. And I think a lot of them I forget there were probably like green like green bottles before but and then like there’s this like this, like really aggressive bright orange product, right? It’s almost like a neon sign in the main image. And it just really calls calls your attention and so I think things like that are really what helped differentiate a product and then you can go into a more saturated niche, but with a better offer and in really making it clear to the customer. Why this this offers different. Yes, your question why would like that, that that product from bio Schwartz 77,000 reviews.

Joe Valley  24:58

It’s actually a sponsored ad. But they’ve got 77,504 reviews, with them any reviews? And all I did I just simply did a search for turmeric. And they’re they’re not on page one for the the organic searches. Actually they are they’re on the very bottom. With that many reviews, what what would it take to get them up the number one? You know, to the to the first row of results? I mean, that many reviews to me seems like it would be a, you know, a catalyst to getting it up to the first row of results, but they’ll blow sponsored ads.

Fernando Campos  25:38

Totally. Yeah. You know, honestly, it just really depends on the keyword they offer, like their price point. I mean, specifically for bio Schwartz. I mean, they’re, I mean, they’re one of the leading brands on Amazon in the supplement space, I would say it would probably be pretty easy. I’m surprised that they’re not ranked a little bit higher, to be honest. But, yeah, I mean, yeah, it could be like, it could be pricing could be indexation, it could be a million different reasons. It could be that tomorrow is just too broad. And then so they need to be more on like Turmeric supplement, or Tumeric capsules, versus like just Turmeric maybe, maybe the people that are searching just to Merck are actually looking for like the powder for like cooking

Joe Valley  26:27

or something like that. What other what other tips and suggestions? Would you have to people listening in the audience in terms of one of the one of the top five things they should do? Yeah,

Fernando Campos  26:39

I would say number four, yeah, going back to like the main image is really testing your main image. And so really optimizing for click through rate, you know, PickFu is a phenomenal service out there. But you can grab, you know, two of your biggest competitors, and then put your main image there, and then just really keep optimizing with your design team until you’re getting a higher click through rate than everyone else. You know, we’re looking for at least that we’re taking 50% of the clicks, there’s four options. You said that sometimes you said

Joe Valley  27:09

kick food pitch, who helps with that analyzing the images or analyzing click through rate versus your competitors?

Fernando Campos  27:16

Good question. So they will let you kind of do like an online focus group in a sense, where you grab your a few of your competitors main images, you kind of can assign prices, and then you kind of randomize it, and then you’ll send people to vote, and then they’ll give you the results. And then we’re, we’re wanting to basically have people choose at least like 50 50% of the time where like, you know, normally you’d have 25% of the votes if there’s, let’s say, four, four, total options. But some of our listings that will create just do such a great job because like the colors and the weights merchandise, we send them see as high as they will get 75% of the clicks are some of the representative boats. And so that’s like, what we’re like, Okay, this is going to be a home run like this. This totally is going to work. Thanks. Excellent.

Joe Valley  28:11

Yeah, so for those listening, it’s pickfu.com. And fu is spelled fu so pick fu.com. Looks like you can sign up for a free trial. But what what’s the is it a subscription service or a one off service every time you use it? That’s a

Fernando Campos  28:28

good question. Yes, we are our team kind of manages that. And we have we have some stuff in house that we use actually, over there.

Joe Valley  28:36

There’s a membership to it. I just clicked it. I just guess I could have just clicked did not ask that question. Sorry about that. No, it’s all good. Yeah, all right. Yeah, no, getting, you know, biggest mistake I made when I actually had a supplement brand is that I always made the decision on what I thought was best for the customer in terms of images, like, oh, yeah, they’re gonna, they’re gonna like that image more, they’re going to click through on that link more. That copy is going to, you know, kill things. It’s gonna be amazing. And honestly, Fernando, I was always wrong. You know, and I and I didn’t know it until we started split testing, which it looks like PickFu does as well in terms of the images. So that’s pretty cool stuff.

Fernando Campos  29:18

Yeah, and Amazon has experiments now too. So you can run experiments with your main image as well, which is cool.

Joe Valley  29:24

And how do you find that? Is it called Amazon experience experiments? Or what is? Yeah, it’s

Fernando Campos  29:29

within, you know, within Seller Central. There’s a Yeah, Amazon experiment. And then so we’ll, we’ll kind of do the test first, internally, using that, and then we’ll, we’ll, we’ll put it live on Amazon experiments afterwards, just to double check. And then we have a running list of internal experiments that we’re running across our accounts and clients. And then so we’re kind of using that as kind of our standard of how we do things.

Joe Valley  29:57

What are some of the The best tools inside of Seller Central that most people don’t use or don’t know about. There’s got to be some great stuff that you know that the common average seller is not using. Or maybe I’m just dead wrong.

Fernando Campos  30:15

Yeah, no, I mean, I think we use a lot of the same, the same ones. I mean, I do think the product opportunity Explorer is really interesting. I, the why, like is kind of, it kind of gives you a little bit of insight in terms of how Amazon like, buckets. specific key words, and then yeah, how they’re associating them it shows. Yeah, like fails over time. Like, I think the last 90 days lasts like 30 to 63 to 60 or 65 days. And it just kind of shows a ton of stuff. I mess around with that a lot. That’s correct.

Joe Valley  30:56

Product opportunity explorer. Yep. Okay.

Fernando Campos  31:01

That one’s more recent. Brian analytics, I, I really love. I didn’t ask the one that I probably spend the most time on. What does that give? Its cataloging the top 2.2 million keywords. And then it ranks them in terms of relative search rank. And then so basically, the number one keyword is at that point in time, the number one search item on all of Amazon. And then you can you can drill down to specific weeks specific months or specific quarters. And then so you can say like, okay, you know, I want to sell whatever, like Halloween product. And then so you can go back to October, like the first week of October last year, and then determine like, Okay, what were the top selling Halloween items, and that way that you can kind of use that like for your analysis. And then for each of those keywords, it shows you the top three items that are based on click share, and then what percentage of the click Share they’re getting, and what percentage of the conversion ship you’re getting. And then that is incredibly helpful. It also shows you where they’re ranking organically. And then so by by seeing where they’re ranking organically, you can kind of see okay, well how much of their sales, again, going back to the branded versus unbranded. How much of their sales is people looking specifically for this brand or this item? versus how much sales is coming from the unbranded keywords? Which is people just searching for whatever kind of deodorizers?

Joe Valley  32:35

Right? That makes sense? Yeah, that’s just out of curiosity, when you do the brand. Keyword search, is that what you call brand analytics? Sorry? How often? How often is the word or the book, The EXITpreneur’s Playbook right at the top of search, that’s it’s the number one search in Amazon at all times.

Fernando Campos  32:56

Every day, it’s every day around

Joe Valley  32:58

every day, it’s never actually so let’s address that, folks. My goal over the next 12 months is to give away 10,000 digital copies of The EXITPreneur’s Playbook. I’ve always said, I’m not gonna make money selling books. But I wrote it so that you, the entrepreneur, will understand the real value of your business and get inside of my head. And what I know and what the team has quietly knows, we’ve helped people exit to the tune of a half a billion dollars in transactions over the last decade. It’s much more than than that, actually. But it’s a comfortable number to say. And so we’re detailing in the book where I’m detailing in the book, the different levers that you can push or pull to get more value, how to actually calculate the value of your business. So if you’re gonna go ahead and sell on your own to a friend, neighbor, cousin, aunt, uncle or through SEO, you want to get the best understanding you can about what what the real calculation is for sellers, discretionary earnings, and all of the different potential add backs, like you’ve mentioned Helium 10, a few times Fernando THRASS. CEO already has that and they’ve got other tools. So if you’re an FBA business owner, and you’re selling to through SEO or another aggregator you’re Helium 10, or Jungle Scout subscription is an add back because it’s an expense that does not carry forward that much more detail is in the book, go to EXITpreneur.io/QLpod to download your free digital version of it. You can read it on your Kindle, your Nokia iBook, whatever it might be. Alright, Fernando, back to cool tools inside of Seller Central that other people and most people don’t use. I want to ask about one more than anything else. Because a couple of years ago, I was working with a guy named Rob Green, who owned a pretty large supplement brand, you know, Rob, and Iran. Yeah, and it was when Amazon’s Subscribe and Save reports we’re just getting a little bit better. And you’re in the supplement business how how far have they come? And do you Do you think Subscribe and Save is something that everybody in the supplement space or anybody that has a recurring revenue product should use on Amazon?

Fernando Campos  35:08

Um, yeah, I mean, we haven’t been in this space that long. So like, it hasn’t been as long as we’ve been selling on Amazon. So it’s hard for me to speak to how far is is truthfully come? But yeah, I mean, truly the reporting still not like gray or as much as you would want. I, we always want better reporting from AMS. And I think that’s like, you know, whatever sellers kind of dream is. But I think in terms of like, the importance, Subscribe and Save. I mean, it’s huge, right, you know, creates more predictability in terms of your business helps you forecast inventory and cash flow. But it also like, yeah, when you when you want to eventually sell, it makes it a more stable asset. Right. And so you’re more valuable if you have more recurring income? Because it’s easier to transition to, to a new buyer. And so, yeah, I think it’s, it’s really helpful. Also, there’s a lot of theory out there that, yeah, like, it’s like Amazon, that kind of folklore theory, that, that Subscribe and Save orders actually, like, really dramatically still improve your ranking, because it’s like always, like 100% conversion. And so because you’re automatically getting like the order, you know, questionably with or without a session. And so so that it actually really helps you rank as well.

Joe Valley  36:35

That sounds like total folklore, not true at all. Why would Amazon to its, you know, anybody with Subscribe and Save is going to rank over, anybody knew that they have a much better product. But I suppose I suppose, because customers, customers keep well, they’re not even coming back. They’re not even coming back. Why would it help with rankings, they’re just having the product show up in their mailbox. And it’s not even a session on Amazon, it’s just in the in the back end of it. But that’s kind of the organic rankings of the product is to folklore.

Fernando Campos  37:05

Well, so I guess the way that you could see it, that where it makes sense is, on average, like the customer ends up spending this much money on this product, like so that kind of like an LTV of like the product. And so if you can see like, and I’m sure Amazon has this data, but is that like X percentage of these orders will move to Subscribe and Save or drive this much revenue over this like five year period on this specific SKU, versus these other skews, and it’s much and it’s like more likely that they’re going to do or to subscribe, and save, because it has 10,000 reviews, and that builds trust versus the guy with 100 Reviews, then you could see where Amazon would justify wanting to index you higher for this product with the more reviews if it’s going to lead to more future revenue friends, right.

Joe Valley  37:56

So it’s so many nuances and tricks and speculative things because Amazon’s not kind enough to tell us exactly how the algorithm and rankings work. They should just be an open book, right? They’re a publicly traded company. They should be right. Maybe not, maybe not. Let’s let’s switch topics here. I know we didn’t get a total of five and I don’t want to dig too deep on Seller Central tools that nobody uses. One of the things that you apparently have done incredibly well is hire full time people like you get a team of 75 remote workers. What’s your process for finding the great ones? That’s that’s, that’s a lot of people.

Fernando Campos  38:35

Yeah, it’s awesome question. I mean, yeah, honestly, it’s the only way that you can scale right to sell, to managing, like lots of clients, and especially these kind of like, really fast growing clients that are, you know, overall pretty demanding. I would say like, it starts from having like a great talent acquisition team. I think we’ve really spent so much time over the last I guess eight years really like refining our largest like, overall hiring process. I think we first kind of started out as a seller, or like an entrepreneur, I think you’re kind of you’re hiring these generalists, typically. And you’re, you’re very forgiving in terms of the people that you kind of brand and say, Oh, they’re like, they’re good. And they’re, they’re saving me time. And so like, this is like overall win. But then, as you start, like really seeing the difference between like an A player B player and a C player, like, it just makes such a like vast difference in terms of like, how much less I need to spend, like training like a superstar versus like, you know, you’re kind of like normal like, I guess whatever B player, if you will. And so yeah, I mean, a lot of what we’ve done to his village is like internally, just like constantly like raising the bar Have our staff and like the expectation in terms of like, what their performance will look like, and just really having, like direct conversations when people aren’t meeting that standard. And so we’re kind of just like, coaching them up or or coaching them out. But I think one of the, one of the things that I actually just heard, Sheryl Sandberg said, the CEO of Facebook, that I really love is that, like, she was saying that their their company’s progress is tied, like directly proportional to the amount of difficult conversations that they’re willing to have. And so just like how open and direct is your culture in terms of saying like, Hey, you’re not meeting my expectations, like, I, let’s work through this together, and, and come up with a game plan, so that you are able to meet these expectations. And if people don’t want to do that, that’s fine, then find someone that that’s able to, but I think that’s been like some of them, the more like transformational stuff that we’ve done recently. Very cool.

Joe Valley  41:03

We actually measure our success based on the number of conversations we had very similar to what the CEO said, Sheryl Sandberg. Where do you find them though? Right. I’ve had John Jonas from online jobs.ph. On the podcast. We’ve used different agencies. And this is mostly for remote VAs foreign vas, we’ve used an agency for an internal internal for US based VA. And eventually, with the agencies, I’ve the you know, we’ve we’ve ended up hiring them direct and bringing them in house direct, but how do you where do you go? Is it at this point, you’ve got 75 people and it just their cousin and aunt and uncle? Or, you know, how do you? How do you How did you start? How do you what do you recommend if if I’m a newbie, and I need some VA? Yeah, that’s

Fernando Campos  41:59

a good question. I think when we first started, yeah, we did a lot of online jobs. I cousin, Uncle, you know, all that kind of stuff. I think, as we’ve expanded, yeah, we don’t use online jobs at all anymore. And so now, it’s more like LinkedIn. Yeah, just employee branding, like, you know, actual, like applications coming in. But yeah, I think what we really just try to do is actually like a lot of like LinkedIn stalking, to be honest, like, you know, just really finding someone with the right background that’s coming from a specific company that has the skill set has already achieved what we’re trying to do in that specific function. And then, and then finding someone with that exact like, profile and pedigree.

Joe Valley  42:51

Wow. Cool. Any, we’re just running out of time here. Any last minute tips or advice or suggestions you’ve got for people out there trying to grow their Amazon businesses?

Fernando Campos  43:00

No, I mean, I think now’s the best time. It’s gonna be right. Today is always like the best day. And then the next one is tomorrow. And so yeah, I would just get started. If you haven’t already, but yeah, it’s an amazing space, such a cool community within the online like, states. And so yeah, feel free to reach out if you have

Joe Valley  43:22

any question. And how do they do that? How do they connect with you?

Fernando Campos  43:26

Yeah, so yeah, I’m really active on LinkedIn. But then also you reach out to me at [email protected] And I’ll try to get back to you.

Joe Valley  43:33

All right. We’ll put those in the show links as well, folks. Fernando, thanks for your time, man. Good chatting.

Fernando Campos  43:38

Good catch up. Yeah, thanks so much.

Outro  43:42

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 podcast at quiet light brokerage.com. 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.