#396 – How Matt Altman Finds His Award-Winning Amazon Hacks
Join us as we unpack the gripping tales and insights featuring the extraordinary Matt Altman. Matt takes us on a thrilling ride through his e-commerce journey, from his early days of retail arbitrage to his current success in the supplements and food sectors. Reminisce with us about the unforgettable BDSS virtual event and a mastermind in Paris where Matt’s savvy strategies earned him top awards, and listen in as we relive a legendary night of strategy-swapping by a bonfire, a true testament to the adaptability and knowledge required in the dynamic e-commerce arena.
This episode also shines a light on the intricacies of Amazon selling as we chat about everything from Amazon Seller strategies to the nitty-gritty of data and semantic SEO and learn how third-party tools complement Amazon’s own data to sharpen sales strategies. We even touch upon the exciting advancements in image recognition AI and what it could mean for future search and ranking on platforms like Amazon.
Finally, we examine the burgeoning relationship between Amazon and TikTok Shop, as the social media giant increasingly influences e-commerce trends and search behaviors. Hear about the tactics that are proving effective on TikTok Shop, and ponder the potential of TikTok Shop as it begins to rival Amazon’s early dominance. We wrap up with a look at strategies for reducing e-commerce fees and a teaser for our next episode, where we’ll have an expert guest talking about TikTok Shop, the Amazon Influencer Program, and influencer marketing. It’s an episode packed with actionable advice and forward-looking insights – you won’t want to miss a beat!
In episode 396 of the AM/PM Podcast, Kevin and Matt discuss:
- 00:00 – E-Commerce Success Story
- 07:39 – Market Analysis and Reselling Strategies
- 10:26 – Amazon Seller Strategies and Masterminds
- 12:06 – Finding Secret Strategies From Chinese Sellers on Amazon
- 18:14 – Evolving Data Tools in Software and Amazon
- 20:26 – Amazon Data and Semantic SEO
- 26:48 – Semantic SEO Keyword Analysis Process
- 30:58 – Optimizing Keywords for Search Engine Ranking
- 33:19 – The Future of Image Recognition AI
- 35:29 – AI in Medical Marketing With Keywords
- 38:41 – The Future of Amazon and TikTok Shop
- 39:01 – TikTok’s Influence on Amazon Searches
- 46:14 – TikTok Subsidizes Shipping Costs for Businesses
- 47:58 – E-Commerce Strategies for Reducing Fees
- 53:30 – Kevin King’s Words Of Wisdom
Transcript
Kevin King:
Welcome to episode 396 of the AM/PM Podcast. Today, we just wrapped up the Billion Dollar Seller Summit number 10 in Kauai, Hawaii. You might be able to get replays. If you missed it, you can check billiondollarsellersummit.com. But one of my guests at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit, actually one of the speakers not even one of the guests, was Matt, and Matt is here today on the podcast. Matt is one of the smartest people out there. He actually won the virtual event and he always delivers massive stuff. You’re going to want to get your notepad out or however you’d like to take notes, because he gives some actual stuff, some actually specific URLs, some places where he gets a lot of his ninja hacks. Matt is part of the Dream 100 with my Billion Dollar Sellers newsletter. The guy is just full of information and full of tactics and just loves to share it. You’re going to really enjoy this. So here is Matt Altman.
Kevin King:
Look who it is. It’s Mr. Matt Altman, the guy that wins everything that he does. Every time he speaks somewhere, this guy is like he’s picking up dollar bills off the ground. He just walks into a conference and just like I’m here to get my money. Thank you everybody. I’ll talk to you later. How are you doing, Matt?
Matt:
Good, good. How are you doing?
Kevin King:
All right, man, you know I’d heard about you, I think from Howard back a few years ago. It’s like this Matt Altman guy spoke at one of the Howard’s, like Elite Masterminds or something like that. I was like, and this guy was like bringing it out, and so I was like, man, how can I get this guy to speak at my event? So I reached out to you. It was like crickets, you’re busy, I think. And then I met you in person in Paris, actually a couple years ago at Howard’s event, and I’ll never forget. I don’t think Norm will ever forget either that one night. I mean you were just dropping bombs at the event you end up winning Best Speaker and I think you got what $10,000, $20,000? I don’t know, it’s a big prize.
Matt:
Yeah, it’s like $20,000, I think.
Kevin King:
Yeah, $20,000 as Best Speaker. And I remember they had a hack contest and you know I’m kind of known sometimes for doing some of the hacks and Howard divided everybody up into a room to discuss hacks, kind of like teams and it’s like three or four rooms and I ended up in a room with you and Leo and I’m like, oh cause, I thought I had a hack. I was like, all right, I got this man, I’m going to win my room. At least, I’ll make it to the semifinals and the other against the other rooms. And then I get and you and Leo Scovio, I’m like Jesus Christ, man, I have no chance now.
Kevin King:
But then that night, I think it was the last night we’re all sitting around this campfire out in the courtyard. This is actually outside of Paris, about an hour or so outside of Paris. It’s this castle and they had this courtyard with like a bonfire pit where there’s a stack of logs, and we sat out there after dinner. I think we got out there like eight, what? 8, 9 o’clock or something. I don’t think the last person left until like 3 or 4 in the morning. We just kept putting on logs and just like sharing stories and techniques and things.
Kevin King:
And I remember Rich Goldstein even was there and he was like I got like a 5am flight, so about midnight he’s like I got to go at least get a little bit of shut eye. So he starts to walk away and then, you know, as he gets 50 feet away, he hears us laughing or talking about something. He comes back and stands behind his chair like he’s just going to listen to the finish of it, and then he ends up sitting back down and then he says he’s got to go again. And then he walks down the hallway. He’s like no, no, I got to go back out. There’s too much good stuff going on. That was an awesome time. Your background, what’s your story, man? For those that don’t know you, what’s your story about this in this whole e-commerce space?
Matt:
So, started on Amazon quite a while ago, it’ll be like 14 years now. Kind of ran with just retail arbitrage for a while, did that for three or four years so I was doing pretty good, and then a lot of the brands started to enforce brand registry and everything against us, so lost a few accounts and decided to get out of that and we got into kind of cheap products from China that lasted a few years. Then got into supplements and food and have been doing that ever since.
Kevin King:
So this was like late, like you said 14 years.
Matt:
2010-11. Yeah, 11, yeah.
Kevin King:
Okay, and so that was your company doing arbitrage. You were working for somebody else.
Matt:
No, it was mine. So we started with textbooks originally. We were buying up, getting. All my friends went to like schools in the area, big 10 schools. We were getting class lists figuring out what books they had, emailing everyone telling them we’d buy their books for a certain price above the bookstore and then resell them for four or five x on Amazon. So that was great until Chegg came out, which was like my senior year of college, and then it just crushed the used book market.
Kevin King:
What was Chegg?
Matt:
Chegg, it was a like a textbook rental company and then it was actually acquired by Amazon like two years after it came out, so you could rent the books for like $20 a semester instead of paying 2-300 bucks for them.
Kevin King:
Ah, okay, okay. Yeah, I remember when I’m a little older than you, but I was in college that I remember that was a big deal. It’s like to go. You know your parents would buy the textbooks for you, or my dad did at the beginning of the semester and at the end of the semester I’m like man, I got some pizza and beer money. Now I can go trade these things in.
Matt:
Exactly.
Kevin King:
Yeah, so it evolved from that and then you went from there into just some regular, just arbitrage type of stuff. Were you hitting the dollar stores or were you doing online?
Matt:
We were doing dollar stores, doing all these discounts big lots, a lot of those kind of bulk discount stores. This was back in Ohio. Then I moved to LA and actually started buying a lot of like Target clearance. Got in decently well with some of the store managers in the LA like San Diego County areas and then started buying pallets of overstocked inventory directly from their warehouses. So, that was great because we were selling Bose headphones and things like that. You put them up, they sell instantly for crazy margins.
Kevin King:
What was something that you remember that just went nuts? I know during the pandemic people were doing sanitizer and some guy was driving around a U-Haul picking them up from every Kentucky warehouse or something, from Kentucky to Tennessee to wherever. What was something when you were doing that was like, oh my God, this is just like the hottest thing at Christmas or whatever. You just could not get enough.
Matt:
So the best thing that we ever found was Nintendo DS’s. They released like limited edition ones that were like Super Mario Brothers or Zelda every year around Christmas time and they’d always be like the Black Friday kind of special we found. If we would buy out all of them and then sit on them for a year, we could sell them for about three to four x what we bought them for. So at one point in time, I had like a 10 by 10 foot storage place just completely full floor to ceiling of Nintendo DS’s, and then they stopped making Nintendo DS’s and the prices skyrocketed so we could buy them for like 70 to 90 dollars and we were selling them for seven to eight hundred dollars a piece.
Kevin King:
You just sat on a warehouse without knowing that the price would go. What if it went the other way?
Matt:
We studied the market on it. Yeah, so we stayed the market on it because they’ve been doing this every year, and we just looked at all the prior years, going back 10 years, and they always, at least, doubled the year after.
Kevin King:
So you took that money that you’re making off of that. Then I guess what you heard about this private label thing where you could go to Alibaba and stick your logo on something, and so you did you dabble in that a little bit.
Matt:
Yep. Dabbled in that. So we were kind of getting the same like brand issues on reselling a lot of that arbitrage stuff. So we went into just like generic junk products. Like we made bad, bad decisions, lost a ton of money on it, but I had a few that stuck and kind of carried us through. About one out of every like 15 we went through actually succeeded back then.
Kevin King:
One out of 15. So that’s kind of opposite of what you’re doing now.
Matt:
We’re a lot more methodical now.
Kevin King:
That’s a little different than what you’re doing now. So you say, was you a partner or was it you had a team and it was yours?
Matt:
Yeah, yeah, I had a team that was working on it with me, so I had a team of buyers that was going to the stores and buying a lot of the retail arbitrage stuff that I brought over with me on the private label side. I mean, we were still doing arbitrage, I mean, but honestly I still love the arbitrage play, like whenever I’m in the store, I’m still looking at things to see if you can arbitrage it. But yeah, so I brought them over.
Kevin King:
I think you just occasionally like, just have like you’re out shopping with your girl and you’re just like I’m just going to grab these right here, stick them in. Go, get me two carts from the front.
Matt:
When we moved to Europe, I filled up an entire garbage truck of just things that I bought for retail arbitrage, that I would buy and just never actually send in. It was a mess.
Kevin King:
So you pivot from the arbitrage to still doing some arbitrage and then private label, and then you ended up doing some. What was the agency? Or you were like man number two or number three or something? Was that your agency? Or you went to work for somebody? What was that all about?
Matt:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, before that, we lost some on private label and I actually went and worked for a big Amazon seller for about a year as we were losing a ton of money. So, like 2017-18, I worked for a big pillow manufacturer in the LA area on their Amazon.
Kevin King:
Yeah, and so is that where you kind of sharpened your teeth, like you were doing it one way, then they were doing it maybe a different way and you like opened your eyes to a few other things.
Matt:
I would say yeah, it opened my eyes to more of a like omni-channel approach because, like, at the end of the day, we ended up I was doing like our social ads, our Google ads, like any other type of paid performance. We were running on top of Amazon, so saw a lot more of the ecosystem and really how we could better launch products in the future.
Kevin King:
After that, then, what you did? Because when I met you, I think you were telling me you’re like one of the early guys at an agency, right?
Matt:
So partnered with a few people on an agency that we did in 2018. So did that for five years, left that agency and then partnered up with George at ClearAds here in the last year.
Kevin King:
George is a good guy man. That’s one of the best guys in the space, really good heart. He was actually during the pandemic you might not know this but he was running my PPC for hand sanitizer stuff. But George was like I’m not just going to give it to somebody, I’m going to give it to somebody, I’m going to give it to my best guy and then I’m going to be on every single call. So, like I was doing calls at two in the morning my time in Texas, which was eight o’clock in the morning in the UK, George would be in his Tesla or sometimes in the office and it’d be me and him and somebody else. And then George was like creating all these special spreadsheets for me they don’t normally guys would do and all this kind of stuff. So he was a George, a really good guy. I really like them and I think that was a good move on both of your parts. It’s smart for George to team up with you and I think that was a good move on your part.
Kevin King:
So when you were doing this agency stuff, where would you say? I mean, you know, like everything in the book, from white hat to gray hat to black hat. Where does that come from? Does that come from Masterminds? Does that come from just experimenting? Are you in some like ultra-secret group that you get tapped out and you know tapped into that nobody knows about. You know the Illuminatis or something like that. Or where do you get all this stuff that you know?
Matt:
Yeah, I would say originally, a lot of it was coming from masterminds going to your events, Howard’s events, things like that, and meeting people that knew different pieces and kind of connecting the dots. I would say in the last like two to three years, I’m getting all of it from, actually, a website called amz123.com. It’s like a aggregated form of Chinese sellers on Amazon and they literally like they are not bashful and saying, like we’re doing giveaways, we’re doing this, we’re doing that. They just lay it all out there. So it’s really interesting. You can go through there and read and people will say, hey, this is what’s working, or this is the shady thing that I’m doing to my competitors, like it’s all there for anyone to read for free.
Kevin King:
Is it in Chinese or in English?
Matt:
It’s in Chinese but you can Google translate it and it works out fine.
Kevin King:
So it’s just like because I know in China there’s a group like Eve Chen, who spoke at the BDSS both the virtual and the recent one that we just did in Hawaii, both the virtual and the recent one that we just did in Hawaii. She says there’s a group of like 300 top sellers in China that get together and just share stuff, everything from like crazy black hat stuff to actually totally white hat, like really cool techniques. Is it similar to that, or you think that’s the same group, or is it different?
Matt:
I’d say it’s a different group, because this is definitely open to anyone that can go to the website, but there’s definitely a lot of high level sellers in there that are just posting anything and everything that they’re doing.
Kevin King:
It’s free or do you have to log in or?
Matt:
Completely free.
Kevin King:
Interesting, ok. So if you see something there you’re like, oh, that looks interesting. Do you then try it out? Or do you take it like, if it’s some sort of like really interesting tactic, you’re like, I’m not so sure about this, let me try it on an ASIN I don’t care about or do you just implement them straight up?
Matt:
Yeah, so we have a lot of ASINs on other accounts that we literally just launched these ASINs to try these things like we’ll order a cheap product like one that we did here recently was like a foot scraper for like dead skin. That’s like 30 cents a piece on AliExpress. We’ll order five, 600 units and just test some of these things to see what actually works before implementing it on any of our real products.
Kevin King:
So the foot scraper is just it’s a throwaway product. You have no intentions on launching that or selling that. You just get something cheap and just throw up a listing, like you would normally, right. I mean, you actually put some effort into it with the pictures and you need to know that it’s a good converting listing and all that. But then that’s basically just a test.
Matt:
Exactly. Yep.
Kevin King:
And then what happens with the products after the test? You just whatever’s left over you just throw away or discard, or you just use it for the next test, like, okay, we only needed to use 300 of these, now we’ve got 200 left. We can do something else.
Matt:
Yeah, we either let them die and sell out or we’ll recall the inventory, resticker it with a new FNSKU and a new ASIN and do it again with a different tactic that we found.
Kevin King:
So is this like a special seller account that you do this on, or is it just on your normal account?
Matt:
We have two seller accounts that we do this on, so we don’t do any of this right away on our main accounts because, I mean, if you read some of the things on this website, like it’s very, very questionable sometimes but we haven’t lost an account from anything we’ve tried on here even though, like some of it, you probably should lose an account with your cough.
Kevin King:
So it’s never been even, you haven’t even had a scare.
Matt:
We’ve gotten, like, review warnings for review velocities but that’s pretty much it.
Kevin King:
I remember when Howard Thai, who’s some of you, he’s been on the podcast and run Signalytics. Now he’s was based in China. He’s American but he’s based in China for quite some time in Shenzhen. He came back to the US. He was just at the BDSS event in Hawaii and he’s getting ready to go back to China. But Howard is pretty well connected in that space and I remember back in like 2018, I think it was 2017-2018, he was doing these Masterminds in China. So you go to Shenzhen and people would meet up with Howard and he would introduce you to some pretty serious players over there. And then he decided to do these masterminds and he does a good job on this Elite Seller Society. I think he calls it, and he did one, the first one in the US, like 20 in Vegas and like 20, I think it’s 2017-2018.
Matt:
The guys from Art Naturals, you know those guys. They were all in the doing all kinds of crazy stuff. They were there and they’re like it was a who’s who of, like, you know how? How do you say this? You know, questionable characters or whatever you want to say. That we’re in this room and I ended up going. I was like I want to see what’s going on. I’ve never done any of the black hat stuff myself, but I wanted to know, like, what the hell are people doing? You know what? What is this stuff? What are we up against? And so I went and he brought in a couple guys from China that you know didn’t speak English and they were translating and it was crazy. It was very, very interesting stuff.
Kevin King:
But I remember, Manny Coats from Helium 10 was like Kevin, you sure you should be going to this thing. I’m like, yeah, why not? It’s just a Mastermind. What’s the harm? He’s like I don’t know, man, I don’t know what they’re going to be talking about. You know, Amazon doesn’t like some of this stuff. I’m like I’m not doing it. So I mean it’s just going to be fine.
Kevin King:
So I go and then Manny calls me and this mansion had like some rooms for people are staying. I was in my room. He calls me, like in the third day, and he says, hey, our second day. He’s like how’s everything going? It’s like dude, I can’t talk right now. I can’t talk right now. He’s like what, why, I gotta go, I gotta go. The police are here, the police are here, and so I hang up on him and then he’s like blowing up my phone. Dude, what’s up, are you okay? What’s happening? I’m messing back and I’m asking him back. I don’t know, I just jumped the fence, I don’t know what’s going on, and I got him really good and so then I finally came clean and he’s like you know it’s a really good event.
Kevin King:
You know there’s a lot of cool stuff being shared. So those were the days. You remember those days where before we had Brand Analytics, before we had Opportunity Explorer and all this stuff. To get that data, you had to find a broker somewhere, and get that stuff. And now Amazon’s just opened it, everything up, where you don’t have to get it on the black market. How has that changed everything that you guys are doing and the way you approach everything?
Matt:
Yeah, it’s definitely made things easier, but honestly, the data they’re providing now is better than anything we were getting back then. So we use it. I mean Brand Analytics Data, we’re using for all of our products, either when we’re launching, re-ranking, just gauging the markets, it’s got everything you need and then Product Opportunity Explorer. Basically tells you what you need to do and what keywords you need to rank for to launch any product. So I would say the data piece has gotten way easier. Finding good products to go after if you don’t have a big bankroll behind you has gotten extremely hard.
Kevin King:
So when you say big bankroll, what do you think it takes now to actually launch a proper product, not to have a hobby on the side, but to actually create a living on Amazon? If someone’s listening to this and I’m thinking about getting into Amazon what’s your opinion on what you really need to actually do this, where you can live in the Western world off of Amazon?
Matt:
Yeah, so we’re in food and supplements, which are highly competitive categories. So on average, in food we’re running about $80,000 to $90,000 for a lunch. It doesn’t include the product that’s marketing that we’re putting into it. Supplements it’s about $50,000 to $60,000. We have done some home decor and things like that where you can still get in for that $5,000 mark like what we kind of used to do way back when. But it’s very hard to find those. I’d say we maybe find like two or three of those a year at max.
Kevin King:
So when you say 50 to 80, 000, just that doesn’t include the product cost. That’s just to spend on PPC and on promotions and different kinds of launching stuff that you’re doing yep outside traffic discounts things like that that we’re doing.
Matt:
Yep, outside traffic discounts things like that that we’re doing.
Kevin King:
What do you find that these reports have done to like the companies out there that provide data? You know there’s several software companies. Helium 10 is one of them. Do you find that the reports that Amazon is providing are great to use in conjunction with those, or do you feel that you don’t need them anymore? Or what do you think where’s the balance between using a tool like Helium 10 and the data that Amazon’s giving you straight from the horse’s mouth?
Matt:
Yeah, we definitely use it in conjunction. If you pull Brand Analytics Data and even Product Opportunity Explorer, you’ll see differences. You have a keyword that got 200, 000 impressions in an ad campaign last week but Amazon says it only got like 3, 000 searches in the search query report data like there’s definitely still some disconnects there that don’t really make sense. So we’re still using a lot of third-party tools to try and blend that data because we don’t have the exact search volume. I mean Helium 10, I think, probably has the largest database of all of that going back and kind of what the trends look like. But we’re using the tools just as much as we always have. We’re just blending all these data sets together and not using like one single source of truth or anything.
Kevin King:
Where do you think this is going with the AI that Amazon’s been testing, All this Rufus and Cosmo and all this talk and I don’t know if you’ve taken a look at any of that. Nothing’s really been fully implemented. They’ve just been dabbling and testing and doing a few things here and there. But where do you think this is going? Do you think we’re going to have to completely change the way we’re building listings and doing things, or do you think it’s status quo? I’ve talked to software guys that are big software companies like ah, it’s nothing to worry about right now, and I’m of the opinion that’s a mistake. I think you’re going to have to. People are going to have to ride the line of doing it the old way and preparing for the new way and at some point the switch is going to flip and it’s all going to be the new way. What’s your opinions on where this is going? What you’re seeing? We can talk about Amazon, Copyhand and some of that stuff that you shared, yeah, but where do you see this going?
Matt:
I think you’re right here. I think Amazon’s going to double, triple down on this type of stuff. It’s really probably the only way for them to clean up their catalog. It’s been getting more and more like eBay, with just random shit everywhere. And hopefully this will be a way that they can weed out a lot of the scam sellers.
Kevin King:
Like 30 cent foot scrapers.
Matt:
Yeah, exactly.
Kevin King:
Just kidding.
Matt:
I mean, we started changing listings like six, seven months ago because we do a lot of like outside SEO. We build a lot of our own sites to direct affiliate traffic to Amazon, things like that and semantic SEO has been really big in the last year or so on Google and other search engines. It makes complete sense that Amazon will switch to that, which is what we think is happening, because the listings that we have updated to be more semantically correct which they don’t include a lot of the keywords that you would normally put in or things like that they’re actually selling better than the listings that we haven’t semantically optimized. So I do think Amazon is weighing in on it to a certain perspective. How much I don’t really know.
Matt:
But we have had a lot of issues with Amazon AI here recently, like the new split testing title thing that’s come up on a lot of products where it automatically defaults you in. We lost like eight products last week because they put a competitor’s brand name in our title through the AI title optimization. Yeah, so we got trademark infringement and the listings got taken down and that’s-
Kevin King:
Wait, wait, this is them doing their own test that they opted you in. They chose a different title based on their AI, read your listing and chose a title to test against your current one. And the title that they chose put a competitor’s brand name in it. And then Amazon turned around and suspended you.
Matt:
Well, no, the brand reported us.
Kevin King:
Oh the brand. Well, yeah, Jesus Christ. So, then you had to fight to get it back up.
Matt:
Exactly and trying to explain that to seller support, brand registry support it’s been completely useless. So we basically just had to admit that we made a mistake and get it back to active and then change it all. But yeah, if you haven’t opted out of that automatic title thing, I would definitely do it. We didn’t even know it was going on some of our products that we’ve had for four or five years. It just started popping up.
Kevin King:
Wow. So for those that don’t know, when you say semantic, people are like what the heck? What’s semantic mean? Can you give me an example or explain that? You know, I always say that Empire State Building and big skyscraper or something. But can you explain it the way you’ve understood it?
Matt:
Yeah. So basically the way that it works is say you’re selling a foot scraper, like we were talking about earlier. In Google’s eyes, the way that it works is the parent topic is foot scraper and then down below that you would have your semantic core keywords, which basically for foot scrapers would be like dead skin, rough feet, like things that people would be searching for that this product would ultimately fix. So a lot of times you’ll have those in your listing, but a lot of times you won’t, like an example that we were looking at a few weeks ago, was a floor cleaner.
Matt:
Amazon was basically not ranking us for quite a bit of terms, for whatever reason. We couldn’t figure it out after this product had been ranking forever. So we redid it semantically and what we found is what Google was looking for semantically was that it works with a microfiber mop. It works with a Swiffer mop, like all of these things that we wouldn’t normally put in our listing because it doesn’t really add any value. Like it’s a floor cleaner, you’re going to use a mop to use it. We wouldn’t add in that detail but Google was looking for that detail. So we figured Amazon was looking for that detail. We filled those pieces out and then started rewriting again for all the keywords that we wanted.
Kevin King:
So how are you figuring out these keywords? What’s the process? So what’s that? What’s the process to figure out those keywords? Because the process now that most people use is they use a tool like Helium 10, Cerebro or other tools that are out there to actually find out what other people are ranking on, do a reverse ASIN search and find out where the holes are and where people are not or maybe it’s less competitive on certain keywords, and trying to fill those in and fill those gaps and then deciding on which of the big keywords that are competitive, that they think they can compete because they have better reviews or better price or whatever it is. So when you’re coming to semantic, when you’re doing, how are you figuring out, like on this mop, that I need swifter pads or whatever?
Kevin King:
Whatever you said, is there a tool that shows you this? Or are you just doing trial and error and file an error and like then getting some? I know, like with Amazon Comprehend, you can get like a score back and so it’s just like throw something in there, see what it scores. Oh, let me take this one out and let me replace it with this phrase how does that work? Can you explain that?
Matt:
Yeah, so, depending on the product, sometimes what we’ve seen is Amazon Product Opportunity Explorer gives you this data. The keywords that are in there are the semantic keywords that you need to rank for to basically get the listing to rank for everything. So that’s on products that are very like definitive and what they are, like the foot scraper, for example, like all of those keywords that we were talking about, will be in the Product Opportunity Explorer, but for every product we’re still using a third party software called allintitle.co and you can basically give it your main product keyword, so like foot scraper, and then it will come back with all of the semantic models that fit into that keyword, based on Google’s analysis, while that’s not like Amazon’s analysis like we’re pretty sure but they’re going to use a very similar approach to actually start ranking semantic SEO.
Kevin King:
So then you’ll take this allintitle.co whatever. You type put in your keyword foot scraper into allintitle.co. It’ll spit back a list of semantic stuff like dead scan and a whole list, and then like to do this for Amazon. Weren’t you using Amazon, comprehend? How does that work?
Matt:
Yep. So we’re taking all the data that this gives us and we rewrite our listing around that and then we’re throwing our listing into Amazon Comprehend to see if the same entities come up as what came up in the Google search and what our scores are for those. So trying to get as high of a score as possible for the entities that Alina basically said are the key factors for that product.
Kevin King:
How do you use Amazon Carpentry? Is that you need technical skill like API cause it’s on AWS, right? Or how to be listening? They’re like what is this, Matt? How do I go there? How do I find this thing? What thing? What do I do?
Matt:
Yep, so it’s completely user-friendly. You don’t need any technical skills whatsoever. If you can use Helium 10, you can use Amazon Comprehend. You do need an AWS accounts. It’s pretty simple. If you just go to AWS and you can even use your seller central login. It’ll log you in and then comprehend is free to use in their web-based form. So you can basically just paste in your contents’ title bullets, description and then-
Kevin King:
Just random data, just a bunch of text in there, basically.
Matt:
Correct. Yep, just paste it in as is and then it will spit out how the AI is interpreting your listing and you’ll get a lot of learnings from it. I mean, a lot of times AI was not figuring out what our products were at all and we thought we had great optimized listings. So you’d be surprised what you have to add and how dumb it may sound, but it does rank well.
Kevin King:
So it spits back out. It actually gives you like an AI written. We think this is a foot scraper. Or is it just say based on this analysis, this is what we would rank you for? Or this is your score of zero to one, you’re a 0.7. Try to get to a one. How does that work?
Matt:
Yeah. So, like, it will give you a score zero to one on how similar it thinks you are to whatever that keyword or entity is. But, like say, foot scraper is the entity and we have a score of 70%, it will then tell you all the keywords that made it think that you’re only worth 70% for foot scrapers. So then you can go in and change how you wrote those keywords and see if that bumps your score up or down and then it will also tell you keywords that you may be missing to hit that entity score. So there’s a lot of kind of back and forth that you have to do to play with it, but it shouldn’t take anyone more than like 20-30 minutes to optimize their listing in that.
Kevin King:
So the way you write the information, it’s not just getting the keywords in there somewhere, it’s actually the way it’s phrased and the way one word or phrase leads to another or where they juxtaposition against each other. So it’s not just a like now, it’s like in the search engine you know the backend on Amazon you just fill it in all the words and Amazon figures it out and says, okay, that, what matches show this guy’s product. But on this, it’s more like the way it’s actually said or something like if it’s Empire State Building. Empire State Building is one of the tallest buildings in New York City. That would be different than just putting Empire State Building comma, tall building comma, whatever. So it’s actually looking at the context of it, not just what’s there and what’s not there.
Matt:
Yep, exactly like in the floor cleaner example earlier, it’s a hardwood floor laminate kind of floor cleaner. You would expect if you just put hardwood in your title or bullet points somewhere like you would rank for hardwood. But when you look at the entity scores, there’s actually different levels of hardwood. There’s commercial hardwood, there’s residential hardwood, there’s like sports courts, like basketball hardwood, and you have to use certain semantics in each of those sentences and mention hardwood in order to get your scores up for each of those.
Kevin King:
So you found once you played around with this and reworded stuff and took their advice. Then you go and you change your listing on Amazon, sales shot up.
Matt:
Yep.
Kevin King:
Every single time, almost instantly.
Matt:
Yep, yep. Within two to three days, you’ll see more traffic, more sales.
Kevin King:
So why? You were one of the first people that I know of that mentioned this. You posted on LinkedIn a while back and I referenced it in my newsletter, Billion Dollar Sellers and then you spoke about it at the last BDSS virtual event. But why do you think most people never, even still have never heard of this? Why do you think this is not out there? This sounds like this should be a no-brainer.
Matt:
I think it’s big in the like SEO space outside of Amazon, definitely something that’s been controversial there for a few years that a lot of people have been messing with. But in Amazon SEO has never really worked the same way it does outside of Amazon. So people are very kind of one mindset track for SEO on Amazon and hard to get off of that. People are also afraid to change their listings if they have a good selling product. They’re afraid any change they make is going to ruin that.
Kevin King:
What do you think is going to happen with images? I’m of the opinion that images are going to play a major role in ranking, and I give the example. I don’t know this, this is just my hunch and I may be totally wrong. I’m curious to get your thoughts on this. If I’m selling an umbrella and I have an umbrella, and this umbrella could be used for the rain, it could be used on the beach to keep you out of the sun. It can be used in a variety of places. I’m of the opinion if my image stack does not have, let’s just say, a woman sitting on a towel on the beach with an umbrella to keep the sun off of her in one of my photos, I’m not going to rank as well for a beach umbrella, even if I have the words beach umbrella in my title or somewhere else in the listing. I think it’s going to get to the point where they’re going to analyze the photos and do the semantic stuff based on what’s in your photos what do you think about that?
Matt:
I 100% agree. Um, we’ve tested this actually on our other accounts where we don’t fill in any content on the listing. Um, except for the images, and we know for a fact Amazon is scraping the images and the text that is in those images, because every word that was in our images we ranked for, with no other content on the listing.
Kevin King:
That’s just words, though. That’s text in the image, okay, but what about the actual what the photo is of?
Matt:
I think it’s coming. I don’t know if it’s fully there. Right now we haven’t been able to definitively say yes or no. We’ve been testing that but I know they look at the text, so I guarantee it’s coming in the next year.
Kevin King:
So on text-wise, if you want to get the word CBD, you can’t put that in your title, but if you put that in your image, no, they’ll still block you on that, won’t they, even though it’s in your image, because they’ll pull it out.
Matt:
That’s where it gets interesting, where you can use, like, varying fonts to where, like their flags won’t flag it, but the AI will still interpret it as CBD.
Kevin King:
They’re not font, so like the little puzzle things, where it a human. What do you mean?
Kevin King:
I can tell what it is. I mean right.
Matt:
So the we we’ve done this not with CBD, but with other flag terms. In the medical space, if the spacing is wider than like what a standard spacing would be, there are bots that flag it for like keyword flags will not pick it up, but the AI that they use for image recognition will pick it up the keyword assets.
Kevin King:
So it’s two different. It’s two different things One is the policeman and one is the one just checking the content or telling the story or whatever.
Matt:
Yeah. We sell like a weight loss supplement right now and like you can’t put like fat burn or weight loss like in your title. But we have it on the product packaging and it’s spaced weirdly. Like if you and I look at it would read really funky, but it gets through their internal flags but the AI can still see it and we still rank.
Kevin King:
It’s like that. What’s that old trick where you can write a paragraph in English or maybe this is I know it’s in English and if you change the first and last letter of every word, you switch them. People still know it, can still read the entire thing because your eyes recognize it. So AI is doing something similar to that. That’s interesting. I think it’s also the way, just like in semantics, just like we talked about, the way you actually position the words, the phrases in your listing can make a difference. It’s not just having them there, but it’s the way they go together. I think that’s coming on images too.
Kevin King:
I did an example test. This wasn’t with Amazon, this was another image recognition software called Yama I think it is yama.co, I think it is. And I actually took on the back of my phone I don’t have it on this particular phone, but I had little reading glasses that stuck on it’s like a little stick on case that just sticks on. And then I pulled out the it’s like a little stick-on case that just sticks on and then I pulled out the glasses a little bit just halfway out of the case, so it’s like spilling out of a bag or whatever and I took a picture of that and I gave it to the AI and it interpreted the mobile phone correctly, interpreted everything else correctly, but it said those are a pair of keys instead of glasses. So it misrecognized what it was, and so I think there’s going to be issues like that where the positioning of the way something is arranged in your photos is going to be a make or break as well where it could be completely misinterpreted. So I went back and I changed the way those little things were coming out the little glasses were coming out of the phone and it finally figured it out. But I think it’s going to get to that point as well, and so I think now sellers need to be thinking about both of these. But I mean, even like what you said you should be using, at least taking the first steps and using Amazon Comprehend that should be a no-brainer right there.
Kevin King:
Where else do you think this AI when it comes to search? That’s helping everybody right now. But where do you think search is going to go? Do you think it’s going to get to where it’s not so much keyword-based but more intent-based, like Google’s testing this right now? Some other, you know, the Rufus it came out and it’s getting panned by the people that are in beta with it, saying but it’s early, everything is early. I’ve got Astro here, Amazon Astro, the little robot roaming around my house, and it’s just a toy. Is it practical and useful? Not really, but it’s a cool little toy. So that’s where a lot of it is. But it’s going to evolve quickly and I think that the way people search on Amazon is going to dramatically change. What do you think? Or do you think people are just so ingrained, like you said, like sellers are ingrained in the old way of doing stuff. Consumers are just ingrained in the old way, or do you think it’s going to change?
Matt:
I think it’s going to change. I think, like the biggest thing that we’ve been seeing in the last year is TikTok is really influencing search on Amazon as a whole for us and it’s not really people searching directly for our products or different things. They’re just searching from their memory of what they saw on TikTok, which they may not include any of the correct keywords, but Amazon is able to interpret whatever they’re searching. So we do think there is some sort of like social connect that Amazon has with all of the social platforms where they’re keeping track of what’s going viral and what hashtags and different things are being called out in those channels. Because, like, we’ve seen it time and time again where we blow up a product on TikTok and then we rank for all kinds of weird words that come through because of this TikTok traffic and the way that they were searching on TikTok.
Kevin King:
Are you doing Amazon and TikTok? Are you also doing Walmart? Where are you focused right now? What buckets are you mostly concentrating on?
Matt:
So our biggest focus right now is TikTok shop. I think TikTok shop is where Amazon was in like 2014-15. Like, you can leverage the heck out of it right now. If you know what you’re doing, and it’s very easy to get content, get videos from creators. They have an amazing affiliate platform that’s already hooked in and does a lot of the heavy lifting for you. So we’ve just been taking a lot of our Amazon ad budget and pumping it into affiliates on TikTok, but what we’ve seen is our branded search on Amazon goes up 40, 50% when we’re running TikTok ads or pushing TikTok influencers, and Amazon sales have actually been growing more putting 10K into TikTok versus putting 30K into Amazon ads. So it’s doing very well for us across every product category.
Kevin King:
Is that something ClearAds is doing now y’all dabbling into TikTok as well, or is it still uh? Because I know George’s background was Google and then he switched to be mostly just Amazon, focus primarily on Amazon. So now is TikTok a component ?
Matt:
Yes, so it’s something that we were doing internally on four or five accounts for like the last six months, and then in the last three months we’ve hired out a complete like TikTok team. So we’ve got content creators, we have Affiliate Managers, Ads Managers for TikTok, everything and it’s going to be a big focus for us in the next year.
Kevin King:
Now you said you can blow up TikTok if you know what you’re doing. So what are a few things that I need to know? So I know what I’m doing.
Matt:
So the one thing I would say TikTok doesn’t work well for is high price products. If your products are like $15 to $50, it is perfect for that, because right now everything we’ve seen it’s just how much content can you get on the platform in a short period of time. So we’re strategically trying to get 100 to 200 influencers that we’re working with per week. These influencers, we aren’t paying them, they just get commissions from TikTok. If the product sells, we give them free product, so it’s not as expensive as what you would think it is and you basically just overload the TikTok system with videos about your brand. You can see all of their videos and the analytics of kind of how it’s doing. And then any of them that we’re seeing that are getting good views, good interactions, within a day of the video being posted, we’ll reach out to that creator and do spark posted ads, boosted ads, behind it, where we can basically run an ad on their post and try and inflate those views and interactions.
Kevin King:
So what are you driving most? So what’s the balance between sales made on TikTok shop versus people that are going and doing branded search and going to Amazon? People are like this looks cool, but I don’t trust TikTok shop or I don’t know who’s shipping this. I don’t know who this guy is, but I trust Amazon. It’s sitting there at Amazon. I know I’ll get it tomorrow or the next day because you can’t promote directly, directly to amazon really anymore. Right, you can’t put links in there it used to.
Matt:
You can still put links in, but it’s very hard to track it, to be honest.
Kevin King:
So what’s the balance there of? Is it 50, 50, or what are you seeing?
Matt:
Yeah, so we’re pushing everything straight to the listing on TikTok shop but we’re seeing about 50 to 60 percent of the traffic is going to Amazon. Ultimately, I think exactly what you said a lot of people still don’t trust TikTok shop. It’s like younger Gen Z trust TikTok shop but anyone over 30, they’re on TikTok but they aren’t buying from TikTok shop. Yet we see a huge increase in just direct traffic to Amazon and people searching for the products.
Kevin King:
What do you think is going to happen with all this legal stuff with TikTok? Where do you think that’s going?
Matt:
I think, it’s all going to get squashed. They’re going to set it up so the U? S can make some money on it, cause there’s too much money to be made on TikTok, and everyone will be happy. But we may have some hard times here in the next six months in between that.
Kevin King:
Yeah, I think that’s my opinion too is I think I don’t think it’s going away. I think it may change, obviously. I don’t think it’s going away. I think it may change, obviously. You know, probably going to have to have some different ownership or different corporate structure or whatever. But I don’t think it’s too big.
Kevin King:
I don’t think in too many people it’ll be a revolution in the younger generation if it goes away and plus it can be used for political gain. You know to be on the opposite side. You look at someone like even Trump you know I’m not trying to get political here, but where he, a few years ago, he’s like ban everything Chinese. Now, you know recent, you know, a month or two ago, he said you know I, I don’t think we should actually ban TikTok, because then Facebook would have all the business, you know. So it’s a, it’s a political dance, but I don’t think it’s going anywhere. I think the opportunity, the algorithm, might change a little bit because it depends on if China is going to let some of that technology export or not, but I don’t know. It’s going to be interesting, but I don’t think it’s something people should be shying away from. Even if it goes really bad, still make hay while the sun shines and do what you might as well.
Matt:
Yeah, I mean we have some products on there on tiktok shop. They’re doing more than our Amazon store does in a day easily, and I mean it takes no work at all. You can set up your Amazon listings in 10-20 minutes and be selling.
Kevin King:
You mean TikTok listings?
Matt:
Yeah, so you can link them. We use a software called Webe and basically it will actually take all of your seller central items and automatically list them on TikTok shops for you.
Kevin King:
Weeby ? W-E-E-B-Y?
Matt:
W-E-B-E. Yep, but we use Amazon multi-channel fulfillment to fulfill everything and it takes care of it all for us.
Kevin King:
How are you finding that, I’ve used multi-channel fulfillment in the past to like fulfill stuff off my Shopify store and the problem I would have is it the stuff would just not be shipped on time and with TikTok it doesn’t matter as much on a Shopify store and I guess necessarily it takes an extra day or two, but TikTok will penalize you Because Amazon puts that lower priority. If they get busy, that third party fulfillment goes down the list and you might not be shipped in a day or two, it might be shipped in three or four.
Matt:
Yeah, so we’ve been doing the fastest option they’re like expedited one and we haven’t had any issues as of yet. Main reason is because of that TikTok. Like you got to fulfill in a certain timeline or else you lose your account pretty quickly but right now TikTok is offsetting fulfillment fees, so they’re actually rebating us back whatever it cost us to ship those items so we don’t care that it’s costing like seven to ten dollars to ship each one.
Kevin King:
They’re giving you the full amount, or they give me an amount that covers that, or they you actually report to them and say this is what we’re spending. They reimburse you. Or are they just saying, okay, we’ll give you $6 per one, and you’re just realizing, okay, I’ll just pay an extra buck, or how’s that work?
Matt:
Yeah, so we’re actually giving them a full report on it and they’re reimbursing us.
Kevin King:
Interesting. Okay, that’s cool.
Matt:
Okay, that’s cool, I mean yeah, I think that’s the other thing like we aren’t running discounts on TikTok shop, but like you can buy our items that normally sell on Amazon for $24 for $8 on TikTok shop right now, because TikTok subsidizing like discounts across the board, so it’s been really great for getting new customers for us as a whole.
Kevin King:
So, besides this AMZ123 that you mentioned earlier, what are some other good places? People are listing some of the advanced sellers where they can stay on the cutting edge or where either shows they can go to or forum or groups they can be involved in or things they can read. What are some things that you might recommend to stay on the cutting edge and especially for advanced sellers? Maybe not so much for the new people that are just trying to figure out what a SKU is and what an ASIN is but for the guys that are trying to scratch out a living here.
Matt:
I would say you’ve got to go to the industry events so like your events, Howard’s events, things like that where people that know these things will be there and they attract sellers from overseas that know these things as well. So that’s always a great resource. But really I would say, like 99% of it I get from AMZ123, because they actually have on there, I’m looking to see what it’s called right now, cross-border information is what they call it but it has every single major forum and group that Chinese sellers are in. There’s like 65 of them and you can click into each of those from there. It’ll give you a good basis of what’s happening and then you can actually have conversations with people that are logical, cause if you just go up to someone and like ask them point blank about something, they’re not going to tell you, but if you are able to provide detail and do things and they know that you probably know what’s going on, they’ll be a lot more willing to be open with you about what they’re actually doing.
Kevin King:
So what else is happening out there in this space? What else are you seeing on the horizon that you know? What do you think about with all these fees that increase fees and inventory stuff? Do you think that’s going to filter out some people? Do you think the strongest are going to survive? And a lot of people are going to get filtered out that don’t realize that they’re actually losing money and now realize they’re actually losing money.
Matt:
Yeah, I think it’s going to hurt a lot of people. I think it’s going to hurt Chinese sellers as well with the low inventory fees. They kind of get a pass if they use AGL, because you don’t have to pay the multiple shipments fee thing for AGL. But low stock will kill them because they’ve got to basically send a bunch of inventory all at once, which most don’t do that they’re slow shipping small shipments over.
Matt:
I think the biggest thing for us, like, we had to increase pricing on some items. But if you reach out to Amazon Freight, they actually have a way around these. It will help. It will not completely get rid of the fees, but they have a way where you can do five or more shipments so you don’t pay the inbound fees, and then they can actually on the backend resegment those into like two shipments instead of six or seven shipments. So just go to Amazon Freight and sign up for an account and you’ll get an account manager and when you create a shipment you can email them and they can help you readjust those shipments down to one or two.
Kevin King:
As long as they’re freight shipments so you wouldn’t be able to use like UPS ground or something on that. So that would be as long as you’re shipping and freight like pallets.
Matt:
So technically they can still do it for UPS. So I would create a relationship with the person before you ask them to do it for UPS shipments, because it’s not what it’s meant to be, but they can merge UPS shipments too.
Kevin King:
Because there’s something I used to use when we were doing hand sanitizers, because Amazon wouldn’t handle that because it’s hazardous goods, so we couldn’t ship it in through the Amazon shipping program, you know the discounted one. So I set up with UPS, it’s called ground with freight pricing. So you actually, instead of I could just ship stuff in on pallets, you know, with UPS or any truck, but then it would take forever to get checked in. You know it sits on the trucks. But anytime you ship in by UPS individual parcels, a lot of times those things get processed quicker or at least a few of the boxes get processed. Instead of unwrapping a pallet, you get a handful of them in and the other handful show up later and so you can better stay in stock that way. And I was using UPS ground with freight pricing and the pricing was equivalent to what Amazon’s getting and I think my price with Amazon was like $8.50 a box and with UPS Ground with freight pricing was like $8.60 a box and I was able to just spit out boxes. I think you had to ship 150 pounds on a single shipment so you couldn’t just send out 1C and 2Cs, but between 150 and I think it was 600, if I recall, pounds on each shipment. So if we had more than that, we’d just break them up, but it worked really, really well.
Kevin King:
That’s another option that people could look at. Just um, if, if you know, if you’re getting hit with highway robbery, um on some stuff, because a lot of times you can negotiate depending on your volume. Those UPS rates are highly negotiable. FedEx is having some trouble right now too. Um, so they uh, you know they land off people and they’re down. If a new contract, the postal service, that may help save them, but they’re struggling too, because Amazon has become like one of the biggest in the shipping logistics world now with their whole system. It’s crazy what’s happened.
Matt:
Yep, yeah, no, it’s definitely crazy, and we’ve been seeing the rates through Amazon Freight have actually been about 20% cheaper than Amazon partnered carriers directly on the platform, so you’ll save a little bit there as well.
Kevin King:
So, Matt, this has been great. We could keep talking for quite some time but we have to get a build another fire and sit around the fire and have someone keep putting logs on with some good adult beverages or something. But no, it’s been great having you on here. I appreciate you sharing everything. If people want to reach out to you. How would they go about doing that?
Matt:
Yeah, best way’s either on LinkedIn or at our website clearadsagency.co.
Kevin King:
Awesome. Thanks, Matt. Appreciate you coming on man.
Matt:
Yeah, no problem, thanks for having me.
Kevin King:
I couldn’t take notes fast enough. I don’t know about you, but that was value packed Even for me, with Matt spilling out a couple of places I hadn’t heard of that I’m going to be checking out right now. Actually, that was an awesome episode with Matt, as usual. We’ll be back again next week with another killer episode with Gracie Ryback. We’re going to be talking influencer marketing and all kinds of amazing stuff. She’s going to go deep on some things what’s working, what’s not working, her thoughts on TikTok, how to work with influencers just a whole bunch of cool stuff. So make sure you check in with us again next week to listen to Gracie, go back and listen to Matt again if you need to, because this issue was jam-packed. But before I leave you today, I’ve got some words of wisdom for you. The amateur doesn’t know what to do, but the master knows what not to do. The amateur doesn’t know what to do, but the master knows not what to do. See you again next week.
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