#428 – Kickstart Your 2025 with Amazon Strategies, PickFu Insights, and Social Media Tactics Featuring John Aspinall
Kick off the New Year with us as we sit down with John Aspinall, a leading influencer in the Amazon space and brand evangelist for PickFu. Together, we navigate the evolving dynamics of social media and explore strategies for effectively leveraging platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and LinkedIn. John shares his insights on using PickFu to test images and pricing, while addressing common misconceptions about Amazon as a source of passive income. We reflect on the shift from get-rich-quick schemes to more sustainable business models, alongside the aspirations of the younger generation, who are increasingly drawn to becoming influencers and creators in today’s digital economy.
In a captivating discussion, we contemplate the potential acquisition of TikTok, with Amazon rumored as a possible buyer, and consider the implications of such a purchase without TikTok’s unique algorithm. We trace TikTok’s evolution from its Musical.ly origins to a powerhouse of creative content that rivals other social platforms. By examining the rise and fall of creative platforms like Vine, we offer insights into the future of content creation and the potential regulatory challenges that may arise for TikTok. Join us as we weigh the possibilities and potential outcomes for TikTok’s future.
As we continue our exploration of social media strategies, we get into the nuances of optimizing content across various platforms. We discuss the effectiveness of Instagram Reels, Snapchat’s transformation, and the challenges of maintaining a professional presence on Facebook. With John Aspinall, we explore the art of LinkedIn engagement, emphasizing authenticity and the risks of automation. Finally, we examine how tools like the Helium 10 Audience tool powered by PickFu enhance consumer research and product presentation strategies on Amazon, offering a comprehensive look at how brands can better understand customer behavior and optimize their social media presence.
In episode 428 of the AM/PM Podcast, Kevin and John discuss:
- 00:00 – Social Media Influencer Dynamics and Trends
- 06:18 – Influencers Impact in China and U.S
- 11:18 – The Future of TikTok Algorithm
- 13:17 – Evolution of Short Video Platforms
- 14:37 – Social Media Platform Dynamics and Strategies
- 24:20 – Maximizing Visibility Through Impressions
- 26:05 – LinkedIn Strategy for Brand Growth
- 30:49 – Optimizing Polling Strategies With PickFu
- 34:53 – Proper Targeting for Marketing Success
- 41:10 – Understanding Customer Behavior Through Split Testing
- 41:23 – Pricing Strategy Experiment Results
- 45:42 – Product Presentation Strategies for Amazon Success
- 46:43 – Packaging Strategies for Amazon Success
- 49:31 – Importance of Clickable Hero Image
- 54:41 – Maximizing ROI With Market Research
- 55:56 – Newsletter Strategy and Dream 100
- 58:28 – The Mystery of Newsletter Selection
- 1:00:47 – Kevin King’s Words of Wisdom
Transcript
Kevin King:
Welcome to episode 428 of the AM/PM Podcast. Happy New Year, everybody. Hope that New Year’s getting off to a good start for you and you have been having a great holiday season. My guest this week is one of the best to start the New Year off with John Aspinall. John is a big influencer when it comes to the Amazon space, on LinkedIn, on social media. He’s also one of the ambassadors and one of the guys that’s helping PickFu really explode out there. We’re going to be talking about social media, some tactics and things around strategies around social media, as well as testing your images, testing your main image, testing your pricing, different things, what’s working, what you should be really paying attention to and a few little tricks when it comes to actually using PickFu. So I hope you enjoy this episode with John.
Kevin King:
Mr John Aspinall. How are you doing, man? Welcome to the AM/PM Podcast.
John:
I’m doing well, sir. I love the name because it makes me think is it AM or P? Like? What part of the day do I like the best? Whenever I hear that I’m like AM or PM. I’m like AM. I got to wake up and take the kids to school and I got to get the day started, but I like that. But then PM, I’m winding down. You get the best of both worlds with it, so I love it.
Kevin King:
Yeah, Manny Coats, actually the co-founder of Helium 10, actually gave it that name when he started it back in 2015. It was just documenting his journey as a seller, before he even had Helium 10. And I think it actually stands for something else. It’s kind of one of those entendres that has double meaning. You know AM and PM, night and day, making money while you sleep like a money printing machine or something–
John:
I mean Amazon is a money printing machine when you do it right. To me, it’s always when people start to say, like you know, Amazon is passive income that makes me kind of get like it’s not. Right? Like passive income is like people think like oh, I could sell on Amazon, I can ship it from China over here, I can sit on the beach, drink my mai tai clickety clackety, I’ll be a millionaire in no time. And it’s those people that give the Amazon selling space a bad rap because it’s totally not passive income.
Kevin King:
No, it’s, it’s also those people that were pitching it that way. You don’t see as much of that anymore. There used to be the Lamborghini crowd, all the guys on YouTube and there’s still some of it, but at least I don’t, maybe because I’m filtered out. But I don’t see nearly as much of the get-rich-quick passive income peddlers anymore, do you still see that?
John:
Yeah, I do. Yeah, I do because I’m in the weeds with that kind of stuff and I like to just get my finger on the pulse of the latest scam that’s going on, but it’s pivoted from like FB. So right now on YouTube there’s not–
Kevin King:
It’s like done for you kind of stuff, right, or something like that.
John:
Yeah, like it’s pivoted right when it’s not a lot of create your own brand, private label, white label. It’s really just a ton of flipping and reselling. And I’m sorry, you may be able to get your start in Amazon with flipping and reselling and get your feet wet and understand the comings and goings, but kudos to anyone that makes a full business that’s actually successful on reselling, because that to me is like the most aggravating thing, because you can get something if it’s gated or if you have issues or if it’s taken. You have to fight for the Buy Box against a slew of a million other people and then it’s just like a price war. But going back to that, YouTube is all reselling, flipping stuff or those gurus kind of pivoted to social media marketing agency. That’s the big wave now where they kind of peeled off of Amazon. They’re like, hey, let me sell you this course where you can run your own social media marketing agency and you can use AI to just make 20 posts for a plumbing company and charge them $10,000 and just take care of their social. But like I don’t know about you, but when I need a plumber, the last place I go is Instagram and start looking at who’s going to fix this leak really quick. Like no, I go to Google. It’s traditional brick and mortar kind of stuff like that, so I don’t know where that’s going to go. But social selling is a big thing that I’ve seen has taken off in other platforms like TikTok. Gary Vaynerchuk has done his whatnot app for social selling and he’s pushing that like crazy. So social selling is the new wave. I just don’t know how well Amazon is going to do it.
Kevin King:
Yeah, I agree, I see a lot of people I mean, every kid growing up now wants to be an influencer, a creator. They don’t want to be doctors or lawyers anymore. It’s I want to grow up and wait. Wait a second, I don’t need to grow up. I can do it right now, when I’m 12, and make a lot of money. So it’s a. It’s a crazy new dynamic out there.
John:
You see, these kids that are 18, 19, slinging crypto and meme coins and Doge coins and stuff like that. I mean there’s no need for traditional business. Like like, like the Gen Z, they’re not looking at it like, hey, let me build a brand and let me put some trademark behind it, let me put some IP behind it, let me put some anything behind it. They’re like no, I can just take a thousand bucks and put it into Dogecoin or Bitcoin or these kinds of things and I’ll just make my money like that. So it’s like the new wave of stockbrokers. Like in the 80s and 90s, everyone was on wall street making money, day trading, doing all this kind of stuff. Like, yeah, that’s still going on, but you know, they’re not taking. These kids aren’t taking their series seven exam or going through like boiler room kind of movie scenes and stuff like that. They’re sitting at home with you know, you know crypto wallets and buying memes on the internet or NFTs and making a killing. So like the landscape’s changed.
Kevin King:
Some of them are making a killing. I think it’s the same, just like an Amazon. Some people in Amazon make a killing and other people most people lose their ass. So I think, I think, uh, it’s the same dynamic in that space too, where you got some of them that are doing extremely well yeah most of them. I saw some statistic uh, there’s 15. This was in China, I think 15 million people are considered professional influencers in China and that’s actually actually a government position, like you know. It’s on the form, when you like here doctor, lawyer, educator it’s like. Influencer is like an official role. There’s 15 million that are registered and a very small fraction of them it’s like a thousand of them or 5,000 of them or something like that actually make over a hundred thousand dollars a year the equivalent, and it’s similar in the US. I think you have some people absolutely crushing it, getting Lamborghinis. From what’s that supplement company that does the stuff that’s given. If you send a million dollars of GMB on TikTok, you get a free Lamborghini. They pay for your apartment in Miami. If you get to 500,000, you get to a hundred thousand. Uh, get to like 20,000 GMV. They give you an iPad. It’s stair steps up all the way to a Lamborghini. Uh, at a million dollars, and people are hitting it. Uh, it’s a supplement company. It’s not Govi. Uh, I’d have to look it up.
John:
But but TikTok has those where it’s like, I call them influencer farms, right when I’ve seen the scenes from behind the scenes, where it’s like you’ll see three or four feet and it’s someone going live on TikTok and then next to them is another person. Next to them is another person. It’s like mini cubicles of people doing lives and I’ve gotten targeted on TikTok. It’s been 2 AM and I’m bored and I’m on TikTok live, scrolling through the feed and you can buy a scoop full of rocks that’s a mystery and they dump it out.
Kevin King:
It’s like a big pot, right, like a big boiling pot.
John:
Yeah, and it keeps vibrating and you have to fish stuff out. I’ve been victim of that. Because it’s the live sell, it’s the sense of urgency, it’s the sense of, it’s the mystery. It’s like the 2024, 2025 blind box or mystery box and everyone wants that. Where it’s like did I buy it for a hundred bucks? Yes, do I have them displayed? No, I have stuff displayed behind me Like cool stuff that I like it’s sitting in a box somewhere. It was an impulse thing, that was just a nice to do. It’s like rock climbing right, if there’s a rock climbing thing in my area in Staten Island, I’ll go once and try it out. Just to say I went rock climbing, but I’m not an avid there every week that’s rock climbing. And I think that TikTok is capitalizing on the attention. Where it’s like okay, we’re going to hit them with rocks, and next time we’re going to hit them with clothing barrels, or the next time we’re going to hit them with something else. Where it’s like what do you just want to try, just to see what you’re going to get. And I think that Amazon does live selling, but Amazon it’s much more curated. It’s very much like the HSN QVC level of production, which is good. But I have yet to have purchased something on an Amazon Live sell over TikTok, and it’s just because of where my attention is when I go on Amazon. There’s buying intent there. I don’t open up Amazon. I don’t know about you. I don’t open up Amazon just to see. Well, maybe because-.
Kevin King:
You’re not going there for entertainment. You just said at 2 AM in the morning you’re bored and can’t sleep. Yeah, you’re entertaining and the TikTok algorithm is figuring out what is it that will entertain you and will keep you engaged, and that they’re showing you that, versus TikTok Amazon, you’re going there looking for something specific to solve a problem and yeah you’re not going there to be entertained and you’re like I want to get my stuff and get out of here.
John:
The TikTok algorithm has shown to target me. It’s very visible their algorithm versus Amazon, meaning, if I like a video about rocks on a live, I’ll get a ton of rock videos—
Kevin King:
If you watch it for more than 10 seconds.
John:
That’s it, I’ll get a ton of them right. But on Amazon, if I look at some supplements or if I look at some home improvement things, I don’t get targeted in a certain way. Yeah, I’ll get some targeted sponsored ads, but me and you, being people in the space and knowing the space, I almost never click on an ad. For me because I know subliminally, just because it’s there at the top doesn’t mean it’s the best option right, it doesn’t mean it’s the best deal. So I almost historically avoid ads and I really just I’ll even avoid sponsored ads, like sponsored product ads. I’ll go right to the first organic one, but I’m I’m not every shopper. I’ll look at the first organic one and then I’ll start my organic search from there and see like, okay, what do I need? What am I doing? But, like you said, I never open up Amazon. Just be like all right, Amazon, give it to me, what do you got? Show me some stuff.
Kevin King:
Well, that’s why I think you may see Amazon. I mean, this is January 1st when this episode is coming out. So happy new year everybody. And this year is going to be interesting year because TikTok, we don’t know what’s going to happen. They, as a time of recording this, they just appealed to the Supreme Court, but January 19th is their deadline to actually either sell to a US-based company or close down, and so I guess in the and maybe there’s been a ruling by the Supreme Court between the time we’re recording this and it comes out. But it’s going to be interesting to see what happens. And one of the suitors that’s been rumored is Amazon, because Amazon’s gotten in bed with them on a few other things and it could Amazon might be someone that’s looking at because it’s going to be a 100 200 billion dollar buy. It’s not going to be a cheap buy.
John:
Yeah, but here’s the thing with that buy it’s almost going to be like buying a pair of shoes and you open up the box thinking they’re Jordans and it’s going to be a pair of flip-flops, because—
Kevin King:
Because, the algorithm is supposedly not going to come with it. So you’re going to have 170 million, but you’re going to have a shell of the algorithm and someone could. You know there’s other people that could that are trying to imitate it and they can they can get part of the way there, but nobody has been able to actually nail it like TikTok has.
John:
And that’s the thing. What’s, what’s the most valuable thing of TikTok? Is it the platform? It’s the algorithm, because there’s platforms out there that are social, that have a larger amount of users, that have more engagement for certain things. Right, you look at LinkedIn. Linkedin just hit very recently a billion users.
Kevin King:
It took 20 years to do that. It wasn’t until Google invested in them, and then Reddit, and then Reddit and LinkedIn kind of rose in Google rankings and it’s boomed.
John:
Yeah, but if you look at the average people who actually active use LinkedIn. It’s a fraction, it’s a fraction. It’s nowhere near the same. So it’s like, if you look at TikTok right, like Gary Vaynerchuk, like a lot of people that listen to him about, talks about you know going where the attention is. So here’s the thing if TikTok was to –
Kevin King:
He, was talking about TikTok. Gary was talking about TikTok when it was called Musically. If you remember Gary back in eight, seven, eight years ago, we right, when he was first emerging as this major kind of a spokesperson for the, for this internet marketing, he was talking about this app called Musically and telling everybody to get on board. I remember looking at it around 2017, maybe 2016, 2017, when Gary talked about it. Then, shortly thereafter, maybe 2018, 2019, it became TikTok. Yeah.
John:
Initially it was just like a dance, like sing lip-sync and dance.
Kevin King:
Yeah, exactly.
John:
There was an app before that which was called Vine. I don’t know if you remember Vine.
Kevin King:
I remember Vine. It was short, little-.
John:
It was seven second clips.
Kevin King:
Seven second videos yeah.
John:
That’s all you got. And that was actually very interesting because there was no, you pay for a premium to get longer, like Twitter or anything like that. You only had seven seconds. So I’ve seen some of the most creative things happen when you only have seven seconds, right. But I think from there, Musically, which is now TIkTok, it’s kind of like yes, it started off with singing and dancing, but they realized where the attention is and it starts with younger generation. And then if you start peppering more of the comedy, more of the entertainment, great, now we have more people watching and engaging. Now let’s try and sell them some stuff, right, and that’s really where it blew up.
Kevin King:
Yeah, what do you think is going to happen? What’s your opinion on what’s where this is going?
John:
One of two things will probably happen. Either A, they’ll appeal it and it’ll just be, um, tightly overseen and regulated as much as the government will allow without cannibalizing it and destroying it. Or two, they would sell without the algorithm. Someone would acquire it, it would be a flop, and then Meta would be the ones because Meta is behind it like crossing their fingers and hoping that it flops. Because, at the end of the day, what’s the next biggest one outside of TikTok for this kind of thing, outside of, like YouTube, for long form, it’s Instagram. So if you look at where people are multi and triple purposing, even at PickFu, where we take our short form videos and stuff like that, yes, TikTok is where you’re getting the most visibility, but we still multi-purpose onto Instagram and Facebook Reels and stories and stuff like that. But Instagram is like the number two guy in the room hoping that that boxer gets knocked out so he has a chance at the title. In my opinion, right, because if there is no more TikTok and there is no more, where do you go? And, like Gary Vee says, you’re going to go where the attention goes, and the attention is probably going to go to Instagram.
Kevin King:
Or YouTube. Youtube shorts are still gaining a lot of momentum too, and more and more people are going to YouTube, and YouTube has been fine tuning their algorithm. It’s nowhere near TikTok.
John:
Here’s why YouTube shorts will never work right and my and my super unexpert opinion. YouTube shorts will never work because when I opened up the YouTube app, I’m looking again. It’s almost like Amazon. I’m specifically looking for something on YouTube that I want to find and then the algorithm will target me, and then I’ll go down the rabbit hole, as everyone’s done. You look at one productivity video and now you’re nine productivity videos deep. Or you’re looking at one SEO video, but when I’m in that rabbit hole, I almost never go to shorts. However, with Instagram, it’s built into the app. So when I open up Instagram, a reel is going to natively hit me in my normal everyday scroll and then, once I click on that reel, now I’m in the rabbit hole of reels, and I’ve gotten into that rabbit hole before where I’m like I don’t really watch reels. Then I’ll see one in my feed, natively in my feed, and then I’ll start going oh, I’ll click on it and then I’ll be in the feed.
Kevin King:
Then you start the thing or the—
John:
Then you start going. The problem with the biggest problem, I’ll say with Instagram Reels versus TikTok, which is the number one reason I don’t watch Instagram Reels if I don’t have to. Is that maybe because I’m an older guy, that when I want to pause a video, I want to pause a video. With TikTok? When I’m watching the video and my kids are screaming and yelling in the other room, I touch the screen and it pauses the video. On Instagram Reels when you touch the screen, it mutes the video. The video still keeps playing. That, to me, is one of the biggest pain points in a video feed format, because if I want to stop the video, why are you still playing the video? It’s just on mute. I didn’t want you to mute it. I want you to stop. I don’t get it. But I honestly think if, if TikTok went away and Instagram and Meta refined their live sort of video feeds and their, their whole algorithm like that, um, people would have no choice to go to that, because if you ever go, you ever go on Snapchat, Kevin?
Kevin King:
I’ve been on a year a couple years ago when it first started becoming a thing, just to check it out and that’s it.
John:
Snapchat has snap stories right, which is it’s the same content from TikTok that gets repurposed on Instagram that gets repurposed on Snapchat stories. And to me, I use Snapchat because the reason why Snapchat’s good is I can take photos and videos that saves natively in Snapchat not on my device and then what it does is every year it’ll say on this day do you remember this? So it’s a way to kind of archive historicals of things going on in my life without clogging up my phone. But I don’t go on there to get entertained. I go on there to share personal things that are going on with me and see what my friends are up to. Yeah, there’s some people doing like Snapchat originally started with the disappearing message. So are people sending nudie pics to each other? Yeah, that’s always going to happen on Snapchat because that’s where you go for that kind of stuff, right. But fundamentally I like Snapchat for storing and archiving and remind. Like I would. I would never know on this day a year ago this happened if I didn’t have it in Snapchat. Like that that’s something no social media has really done.
Kevin King:
Facebook has a little bit of that. They do the memories thing where they’ll show you something.
John:
Yeah, but I, I—
Kevin King:
Five years ago or something like that.
John:
I don’t share a lot on Facebook. Um, to me it’s the the same, like with LinkedIn, right? So LinkedIn company pages almost get no visibility compared to LinkedIn individual pages. The same thing is with, like Facebook, Facebook company pages. Those are the ones you pay to promote and you pay to do this and that, versus your individual page. I made a mistake, Kevin, and I’m not going to say the guru in the space, our Amazon space, that I listened to for this, but I asked him at a show. I said hey, insert name here. I said I have my personal Facebook pretty gated away from the industry and I see a lot of folks opening it up to their industry, to the industry, and getting a lot of traction from that and posting industry content. And I’ve historically only put personal content on there. He said, bar none, you have to open it up to the industry. Personal Facebook pages get much more reach, much more this, that. And the third, Kevin, when I tell you I opened it up, I got slammed with spam. Slammed with spam. The amount of spam that hit my Facebook account. I think I got like four or 5,000 followers or connection requests and it was just that, if you were to boil it all down, maybe about 50 people were worth connecting with. I just find so much fake profiles, scammy profiles on Facebook. You don’t find that on LinkedIn, because on LinkedIn you can’t make a fake profile. Linkedin has their requirements for ID verifying and all this other. It seems like they just make it more like. Whoever this is is like 85% of the way to the truth and they’re not making double, triple profiles just to spam you. Does that make sense?
Kevin King:
Yeah, on Facebook I’m at the 5,000 limit a lot of times. I think there’s a way to raise that, but I don’t bother. So sometimes when I want someone actually to be a friend, I have to go and delete somebody else and so I’ll look for some. I’ll go in and periodically just purge 50 or 100 people out, like someone that’s got like one connection in common or something or someone. Their picture is missing. Their profile picture is missing. Maybe they died or they got off or whatever to open it back up. But my focus now used to my focus, for a long time I wasn’t on social media until about 2017 at all. In 2017, I started using Facebook and then that was my primarily thing. I still don’t hardly ever use Instagram. I hardly ever use Threads at all. Hardly–
John:
That’s a dead app for me.
Kevin King:
I only use X, Snapchat. I use basically LinkedIn and Facebook. And LinkedIn, I wasn’t on until I started my newsletter last August of 2023. I got on LinkedIn. I had like three followers at the time. Now I’m about to hit 10,000. I know that’s been a big focus of you as well, but I get so many connection requests every day and I decline about 90% of them. I see some people there’s these databases that you can get out there that show all the influencers in the space and they show all the people in Amazon how many followers they have and all this, how many connections they have. And there’s people that someone that you used to work with that has a tremendous amount of connections and he’s like number one on the way up there on the list. I’m like those are worthless and you’re just getting. And there’s so many people that come in that want to connect and I do I declined about 80%.
John:
But here’s the fun thing when you, when you decline the connection on LinkedIn, they still follow you.
Kevin King:
Yeah.
John:
So that that’s a win. I’m very curated with my connection requests. So if it’s someone that’s an ICP, yeah if it’s an ICP, or if they can add value or I can add value to them, then I’ll accept. But if it’s like nonsense, spam and it totally doesn’t resonate, I’ll decline. But I’ll still take the follower, which is great. I know some folks in the space purge their followers because they don’t want spammy engagement, which is fair to say, because a lot of folks will say, like, if I make a post and out of the people that aren’t my connections but they’re still my followers that are spammy, they’ll do those typical AI responses which comments which I hate. This one person I talked to says yeah, I go in there and I remove the comment and I remove the person as a follower. Um, because what they’re saying is that when an ICP looks at it, they don’t want to comment. Because what happens is, let’s say, I have 10 comments 8 are spam which are just not AI-generated nonsense. But if one person that’s an ICP or a value adds a comment immediately, all those spam people will then request them. So nobody wants to get bombarded with nonsense so often. I’ll get posts that do decently well and then I’ll go to the Innovate show or Accelerate, and then people will come up to me and say, oh my God, I love your content. I love this video and I’ll look at it and I’m like, well, you didn’t engage with it, you didn’t comment on it, you didn’t interact with it. Kevin, I really believe the money is in the sleepers. The sleepers that are out there that are creeping and don’t engage. That’s where the money is in this business, because those are the people that have the big bucks.
John:
Like for example, when we were at Accelerate with PickFu at the booth, I was like, I was my first time in Seattle and like I was like amazed by the way Amazon puts on events. It’s really, really well done. It’s almost like going to Disney World. Everything is meticulous. And I remember just standing there at the booth we were three people down so we were super busy. It was me, John and Justin, and I remember a guy, just nonchalant, walks over. He’s like, hey, how you doing? And I was like, oh good. And I’m like, what do you sell on Amazon? That’s what was my go-to kind of thing. What’s your business like? Literally just said, I sell data cables and chargers on Amazon. Just like that very nonchalant data cables and chargers. So I’m thinking in my head like, all right, if you were like an affluent big company, you’d be like, hey, I’m bang, this is me, don’t you know? Rock them, sock them, like. I thought like that’s how it would be. So I looked down at his, his tag, his name tag. It said CEO of Anchor products. Uh, Anchor is, for anyone listening, Anchor is a monster, monster company. I think they’re like a top five or top six seller on Amazon. And it was just so interesting the way that and he was like, yeah, I see your post, cause I had mentioned Anchor like a long time ago about how to optimize a hero image, but like he would have never engaged right as that kind of level of a brand. So, like those DMs, those side conversations are really. So the reason I say that is, if anyone’s putting content out there, if you think you’re not doing good, don’t always look at your engagements, just look at your impressions. Because if you have a lot of impressions, yeah, you’re being seen. It’s the opposite of running ads. Yes, you want impressions, you want engagements, you want clicks. It’s the opposite of that. The more impressions, the more visibility you have. The right people will see you, even if they don’t engage.
Kevin King:
So what are you doing to grow your LinkedIn? Because you’ve made a big effort, because LinkedIn I’m finding it’s either Twitter or LinkedIn is where most of the activity is in our space, and I think LinkedIn is by far greater than Twitter. Some people might argue that, but the actions on LinkedIn and you’ve made a concerted effort to grow yours, and I think you made a post recently that you just hit a milestone and you’re shooting for another one. What are you doing? Are you just, are you doing this yourself? Do you have an agency? Or are you just constantly posting and react and responding to other people’s cause there’s a whole, there’s a whole system to actually getting exposure on Amazon where you comment on other people that are big, that are, that have high engagement, and that then starts showing your post on their, their audience, and there’s this whole like little flywheel that, if you get it rolling, it can really work.
John:
I’ve tried out every software that’s out there, like for AI. There’s software like Tapleo. There’s soft like like ClickFury for Twitter. I recently found out through a lot of LinkedIn brand what’s it called brand thought leadership groups, personal brand groups. I got out of those just because my feed was getting a little wacky, but they put out a lot of reports on the LinkedIn algorithm that says LinkedIn is banning accounts that are using any sort of tools to connect for automatic generated, automatic comments. So you’ll find a lot of these tools you have to pay for can get your LinkedIn account banned, not suspended banned and I’ve invested way too much time and energy in my LinkedIn account to ever put it at risk. Linkedin has been proven to make a moneymaker, to be a moneymaker for me. My LinkedIn. If anyone was to ever ask, send your resume over, we want to know. Here’s my LinkedIn. My LinkedIn speaks volumes over any resume or piece of paper. I’ve gotten countless amounts of job offers, countless amounts of times whenever I was leaving a company. I never, because of LinkedIn, I never have to worry about being employed ever again, as crazy as that sounds.
John:
I am always in demand and that’s not like being cocky or arrogant, it’s just, it is what it is because my method is I post daily. I post daily without fail, even if I’m posting a poll. Is a hot dog, a sandwich, yes or no? That was my, that was my 4th of July poll, right? I will always put something up to get engagement. Recently what I did is I carve out two 60-minute blocks a day AM and PM. 60 minutes in the AM, 60 minutes in the PM for commenting and engagement. So I have my posts go out. I write my posts same day. I typically don’t pre-schedule any posts. I don’t use AI for my posts. I don’t use any kind of stuff like that. Everything is written by me. Formatting the first two sentences, sentence, space, sentence before you click see more has to be compelling. That it doesn’t say it in the analytics, but that when someone clicks see more, that is engaging. That’s an engagement activity where that’s being shown to more people. But the most recent thing I’ve been doing is yes, I’m at PickFu and everyone loves PickFu as a standard for A-B testing and consumer research. But people also like to see how they can do that. So I love Canva. I’m a big Canva guy, so I found that when I meld Canva with PickFu in a sped up kind of video screenshot where I’m showing you hey, here’s this hero image, here’s how I’m making it better in Canva. Here’s how I tested in PickFu in two minutes. People that always gets like anytime I put one of those videos up it’s like 20 or 30,000 impressions, 200 engagements, all that kind of stuff, people like that kind of stuff. But I found out the hard way that LinkedIn now has their mobile feed or their video feed, which I never go in. But if you’re putting 16 by nine videos kind of like YouTube, you know formatting like typical video you would see that doesn’t land in the video mobile feed. You have to shoot for the nine by 16, the vertical format. So I’ve recently changed and I was like I can’t squish my you know 32 inch monitor down to a nine by 16. They’ll never see it.
John:
So what I recently switched doing is someone made a post saying oh, it takes a lot of hard work to change a hero image. I was like I don’t think so. So I just hit screen record on my iPhone and I screen recorded myself. I was on the toilet bowl. I put that in my post. I was sitting on the toilet bowl and I screen record and I went into Canva on my iPhone, I optimized it bing bing bing, I put it into CapCut, I sped it up five X, so it was under 60 seconds and I put it up in there and that got picked up in the mobile feed and that got you know a couple, a couple of tens of thousands of impressions and views and stuff like that.
Kevin King:
LinkedIn has brought you a lot of business. How’s it do for PickFu as a company?
John:
It does wonders for PickFu as a company, especially because PickFu rolled out our done for you service. So, basically, if somebody is like, hey, we love PickFu, we love doing this, we love doing that, we think it’s amazing, but we don’t have the time to do it ourselves. Well, we have our in-house team of merchandising graphic designers that will not only run all the polls you need for your main hero image, but then take the information and optimize it for you and then rerun it again to make sure it’s validated and wins, and we just deliver it to you. So that is a new thing within the past six to eight months that I’m connected to, because when I show people Canva and I show people PickFu, they’re like this is amazing, I love it, but I’m not a Canva pro like you. I’m like you don’t got to be a Canva pro. We have Photoshop pros that, if you like that. This takes it to the next level, where we do it all for you. We find that a lot of brands, a lot of larger enterprise brands, before they start to triple down on PickFu polling themselves, they really like to wet their beak on like, hey, you do a done for you for me with the polls, and then I’ll just pay you the 500 bucks. You guys do it, and then we’ll upload it. And if it does good which it pretty much always does then we’re like okay, cool, let’s triple down on the PickFu. Now they’ll come in, they’ll start to buy bulk credits with PickFu, they’ll train their team on it, all that kind of good stuff.
Kevin King:
Yeah, so let’s explain for people listening. They’re like PickFu. What the hell are they talking about? They just switched gears here. So PickFu has been around since around 2016, 2017 in the Amazon space. Before that, I think, they were around. I’m not sure exactly when they started, but that’s when I became aware of them through Helium 10. I think we featured them on a Helium 10 podcast or in Helium 10 Elite or something like that. We did, we did something, um it kind of uh they’ve always said it kind of helped put them on the map, uh, in the Amazon space, and ever since then they’ve evolved. And so around 2016, 2017, I think it was Jungle Scout and a couple other people came out where there’s a program called Splitly. I don’t even know if it still exists and there’s a few others where it was like this is before Amazon had the ability to split test your images or your pricing or anything on the platform, and it’s like they’re like run split test because maybe you’re using the wrong picture and you don’t know, and so there’s this very manual process. And then PickFu came along and said, like we can actually poll people and you can come in and you can choose if you want five people or 10 people or 50 people or a hundred people or 500 or whatever the number is, and you can have them actually tell you which picture is better, which color they like better, which style they like better, but beyond that, they also actually have to type something. It’s not just okay. This is a winner. More people voted for this.
Kevin King:
The beauty about PickFu is you get feedback and so you get people writing I like this one because the blue color, because it reminds me of the sky, or blue because it looks like reminds me of a Tiffany blocks or whatever it may be. And then you read through those and there’s a lot of aha moments just reading through those comments. Or you’re reading through the comments and you’re going, oh, that’s interesting, I had never thought of that on my product, I never looked at it from that perspective and four people here commented about that. And then you guys introduced the AI, where it analyzes all that stuff and kind of gives you a summary, and it’s just evolved and become this major, major thing where it was started as, this basic little tool so if you haven’t used it in a while and it’s evolved and it’s also you guys have a. It’s built into a Helium 10 as well. Helium 10 has I think they call it audiences.
John:
Yeah, a lot of folks don’t know that. They’re like oh, what is that? I’m like, yeah, we’re baked inside H10 too. The funny thing is a lot of people kind of like what you said, Kevin. There’s data and there’s actionable data. Actionable data is what you want. You don’t want just data like what’s going to win red or blue? Okay, if red wins, well, why is red winning? What is the reason they like red and who is liking red? And are we putting it in front of the right people? PickFu who has 90 plus different traits, and I see people oh man, my head hurts when I see people running the wrong kind of targeting. Right where, if you’re a supplement for children, for melatonin gummies and you’re targeting FBA, Amazon FBA shoppers?.And that’s it. That’s the only thing you’re targeting.
Kevin King:
It’s like narrow it down because you have all these filters where you can choose.
John:
Yeah.
Kevin King:
I want parents, or I want people that work out, or I want people that, uh, eat only healthy foods or whatever. There’s tons of you said 90?
John:
90 plus trades. Yeah, and that’s the thing.
Kevin King:
And overlay them, and yeah, that costs a little extra money to to do that. But you’re narrowing your audience and it baffles my mind how many people don’t do that too.
John:
And I tell people when they’re like oh, every time I add a treat it costs a little bit more.
Kevin King:
It’s like asking me which kind of lipstick do I prefer? Because I don’t wear lipstick and so I prefer this one. I don’t know, because the case looks good, but I’m not the buyer, I’m not the avatar, so if you’re not narrowing it down, you’re making a huge, huge, fundamental mistake.
John:
And that’s the thing I tell people and they say, oh, it costs a little bit more, it’s 50 cents more of a reply for this one. Should I really do that? And I’m like, if you’re not going to do the proper targeting, don’t do it at all. And it’s crazy when I say that to them they’re like what do you mean? Don’t do it at all? Isn’t it better if I just do Amazon? I’m like, no, it’s not. Because if you’re a parent, if you’re a gummy for children, for melatonin, and you run a hundred people poll, you’re going to get single people in college saying they like this one. You’re going to get married people with no kids. You’re going to get people that would never give their kids supplements and then you just spent money on data that’s not actionable. So I said, if you’re not going to target it the right way where you can get actionable and I’m not saying spend a million dollars, right, if you’re running a 100-person poll and it costs too much, I’d almost rather you run a 50-person poll. That’s much more targeted, because at least then those 50 people are giving are the actual ICP and avatar that’s giving you that information and then they get that aha moment where it’s like, oh yeah, and then usually it’s not until I show them on like a screen recording or a demo or screen share, where I’m like, hey, did you know you could do this? Tons of people had no idea that you can do.
John:
In a PickFu click test I could take a screenshot of the Amazon SERP, the search engine result page, and I could say, hey, here’s a SERP page on Amazon. From this search, where would be the first place you would click if you were buying protein powder? Normally the click test was for packaging, right when it’s like here’s a package. Click on the top two places that resonate with you where you’re doing packaging design. But I came to PickFu and I was like wait, wait, hold on a second. I could take a screenshot of anything and put it in front of people and say, based on this, where’s the first place you click? Instantly, I said search engine result page and then, to double down on that, I said now let’s do the top half of the search engine result page, right when we’re getting the brand ads at the top, the sponsored product ads in the top left and then the organic stuff. Then I’m able to show people, hey, is your brand ad creative, compelling enough to get clicks. Well, from this click test right here, no one’s clicking on it, right, and they tell you the reason why. Or are you getting ad cannibalization. Meaning, if your sponsored product placement one and your organic one, right, and you’re in the same line right here, is your sponsored one for the exact same product getting the most clicks versus your organic? If that’s the case, what happens if you were to opt out for that one? Would those clicks then go to your organic one?
Kevin King:
They’d still be drawn to the same image or the same graphic.
John:
Some folks will say no. To be number one organically, you have to be number one paid. That’s how Amazon works. And hey, I’m not the expert in that, but I am kind of wanting to see where people’s attention is right. So is it worth a shot to see a thousand percent? Because if you’re getting 10 clicks on your sponsor placement and only two clicks on your organic placement for the same thing, and then if you run another PickFu and just opt out through, like Canva, and put a different product here, will those same people for the most part then gravitate to your organic one? If they do? That’s interesting to test out, because think about how much that’s going to save you. Right A in your ACOS and TACOS. Right, because now you’re getting a ton more organic sales. But then B, what if another product in your offering in your catalog needs more of a lift? Right, your organic number one is already getting that lift. So again, there’s lots of contrarian thinking about that, but I always like to see the what if you know.
Kevin King:
I’m thinking of a sample size. Do you need I mean in probability they say it’s 30 to be statistically relevant, and the more usually the better. There’s a bell curve, actually, but not a bell curve, but like a candy cane curve. But what do you think? What do you recommend? I know you guys have y’all knocked it down to like five people or something, Cause then that’s cheap.
John:
And the lowest is 15. The lowest is 15.
Kevin King:
That’s what I’m going to say so 15, and then it goes to what? 50 and then a hundred.
John:
It goes 15, 30, 50, a hundred I think it’s 200 and then 500. So what I tell people when they ask me this question? I say it’s not a one and done. It’s not like the rotisserie chicken from the 90s said it and forget it. One and done, that’s it. Even for the main hero image. We just released a playbook on how we test multiple times over for the main hero image optimization, just for the main hero image, with our done for you service, and it’s a series of three to four different tests. So it’s not a matter of let me get this one big, mega ultra test and then all that data and that’s it. It’s we’re doing competitive research analysis in the first one. Typically that’s like 30 to 50 folks, right, respondents. Then we’re doing iterations based on that data as the second poll and that’s going to be around 30 or 50. So at no point in the process do you ever really have to do 100, 250, 500 people. Usually it’s the big, big brands that are with us that they’re like hey, we’re not really looking to optimize. You know granular things we really want to see holistically. Is our landing page good? Is it what? Whatever it is right from a real upper funnel kind of thing. But for us it’s more about frequent testing. So it’s not like okay, I tested on PickFu, I tested this one test, this is the winner. So that’s what I’m going to go with. Well, is it? Because in the done for you, we’re looking at your hero image versus your top three or four competitors. Then we’re taking all that data as to why they went with the competitors and not you, and that goes in the iteration process and now we’re making a better version of you and then we’re testing that against each other in the iteration and then the winner of that we’re putting back against the competitors for validation. So you can see, it’s not like one main poll and then boom, that’s it, utopia, I’m all good. We have to take the actionable data, iterate on it and then validate it.
Kevin King:
What about when it comes to buying? This is something that I’ve always had an issue with, because I’ve actually proved this back before PickFu. Back before, in the early days of the Internet, I did a poll. It wasn’t sophisticated like PickFu, but I did a poll. I wanted to see what would people pay for a membership to a website, and so I put up a question. It’s like we’re thinking about doing a membership site. This is what’s going to be included. Which would you pay, $9.95 or $19.95? And most people said, of course they said $9.95. That’s what you would think. I’ll pay the less amount.
John:
Yeah.
Kevin King:
But then I was like no, but would you be willing to pay $19.95? Then I came back and I scratched the $9.95 and then I put some other parameters in and I got an answer to my question from thousands of people and then I was like I don’t believe this, I want to see what they actually do. So I actually set up a website and I put the credit card payment there and I had them actually choose. I put a split test where it automatically split the traffic 50-50. And someone went to whatever the price was $9.95. Someone went to a $19.95. And so I think we sent 5,000 people to it. So $2,500 went to each. How many bought at $9.95 and how many bought at $19.95? But I didn’t charge their credit card. They had to go through the process of actually entering their credit card number, expiration date, everything, and I just sat on the numbers. I didn’t sit on the process and the results were dramatically different than actually what people said. So sometimes what people say they’ll do and what they actually do are two different things. So how does PickFu accommodate for that? Or do they, or can you? or is it a great first first set of research, but then you actually got to prove it and maybe you should be taking your top two PickFus and putting them on Amazon and doing it real world split testing in the real world to make a decision instead of their finger on the mouse. What’s your opinion on that?
John:
Yeah. So I definitely think that there’s some folks that aren’t completely sold and want to run it through an MYE to have that. I will say some MYEs come back hilarious and it’s–
Kevin King:
Tell me what MYE is. People that don’t understand.
John:
Manager experiments so it’s the AB testing on Amazon and understand too that takes anywhere from 4 to 12 weeks to get conclusive data back from an AB testing on Amazon within Amazon’s own thing. What I would say to that is, Kevin, if you were selling I’ll just give another example If you were selling a $75 butcher’s knife right. For premium people cutting steak right, a very high end product and you just targeted Amazon prime subscribers that are men, that, let’s say they’re carnivores or some I don’t think we have that one, but let’s say we had that or into barbecue or something like that and then they were like, yes, I like that. Great, I would buy it. I would buy it. The intent isn’t there unless you make it in front of the proper people, and what I mean by that is it goes back to the traits. So one of the biggest and most powerful traits that I think on PickFu is income, and the reason why a lot of people leave this out is because they don’t think about it. They don’t realize that one of these affluent, crazy CEOs is calling my phone right now. I just had to silence it. The reason they don’t think about it is because if I’m selling a $70 butcher knife. That’s premium, with a carbide steel, this and a handle and whatever. If I’m putting it in front of the proper avatar but they don’t have the means or intent to purchase it. It’s not actionable data. So when I say income, if we’re targeting people not by their income, you’re getting people that make $25,000 a year that are saying, hell yeah, I would buy that in a minute, but they’re not, because they don’t have the income to drop $70 on a butcher’s knife. That’s a premium product.
John:
So I think income is one of the most powerful things, because most folks, when it’s a premium product that make premium amounts of money, will put their money where their mouth is nine out of 10 times right versus the guys that are saying, hell yeah, I would buy that. That’s a genuine elephant tusk handle. You got it sold, I’m taking it, but they’re never going to. So I think that it’s really buried in the buying intent, is buried in the traits, and the same is on the opposite. If you have a lower end entry level commoditized me too product, that’s okay to have those. Those are still bread and butter on Amazon for a lot of folks, but I would never put that in front of someone that makes a hefty income, because they’re never going to buy that, regardless of what they’re saying, and they’re not going to give you actionable feedback. So if I was selling entry level food storage bags to help save money for people that are not wanting to wash things but also we want kids lunch every single day. You’re targeting folks that zero to 30K because that’s the working class, unfortunately or zero to 60K household income. So I think the devil’s in the details when it comes to the income for sure.
Kevin King:
So what are you seeing that moves the needle the most when it comes to, like, a main image? When you see a lot of split tests. You’ve done a lot of split tests with your previous company. You were doing a lot of like live webinars, like let’s break this listing down, let’s improve this, improve this. What are you seeing kind of under the hood at PickFu? Like this is what moves the needle the most when it comes to a main image on Amazon. Is it changing the color? Is it changing the position? Is it making it cockeyed? Is it adding a banner across there and putting the keyword in it? What are, like, three of the top things that people should be testing on everything to see if it makes a difference.
John:
Yeah, so I think transparency is the biggest thing. So if you’re selling a product that comes in a bottle or a jar, you need to show it outside the bottle. That could be anything from supplements, gummies, capsules all the way down to hand lotion, serums, that kind of stuff, makeup.
Kevin King:
Spilled outside the bottle or something like that.
John:
Not spilled right. So it’s got to be a little bit methodical with that. So let’s say, for example, you’re selling melatonin gummies, we’ll stick on that one. If a serving size is two, you’d want to show two of them, aspect ratio in size, next to the bottle. Staying with that example, we’d also want to show the flavor prop. So if it’s a mixed berry flavor, we want to show real photos, not cartoon, stylized photos of berries, because I’ve seen those and they’re terrible on the opposite side of the bottle. And the reason why you want to do this is because my kid hates berries and you’re running an ad on it. I know very clearly not to click on your ad and waste your money and have to find out the hard way it’s berries after I clicked on the paid ad. So you want to show the product outside the packaging. You want to show the flavor. If no flavor, the scent profile. If no scent profile, the main ingredient of anything that’s consumable. The other thing I would say is packaging behind the packaging.
John:
So, staying with that example, it’s a little kind of jar of melatonin gummies. You’re putting the gummy on the outside, but then behind it you’d want to put a box. Now this is where it gets very contrarian and people start to lose me a little bit. I can’t say the names of them because I can’t say the names of them, but there’s lots of brands on Amazon in the supplement consumable space that will put boxes behind packaging that are not real boxes. They are renderings that have more real estate for you to say made in the US, one month supply, perfect for bing bing bing. And when I say bing bing, bing, perfect for kids, parents, moms, plumbers, whoever it’s perfect for the ICP. You want to say very clearly who it’s for. The reason why you want to do this is because Amazon’s Rufus and Cosmo and all that jazz that you know more than me about it can read images, it can read text on images, it can read all this kind of stuff that’s on there.
John:
People try and hack it so much as they’re, Kevin. I’ve seen people put white keywords on the white background of a product where you can’t physically see it, just to start to rank on those organic keywords behind the photos. So I wouldn’t say go that hacky and spammy, but no one is ever going to complain that you put a package behind a product that they didn’t get when they receive it, with the caveat that it’s a utilitarian product, meaning if it’s a pair of scissors or shears or glue sticks or gummies or consumables or chips the kind of things, when someone gets it from the mail and Amazon and they just rip it open and here it is. The problem you’re going to find is when it’s giftable. If it’s jewelry, if you make it look like a very ornate box that comes in and you don’t get it for a giftable item, you will indeed have problems with it. But for anything that’s a utilitarian thing that could rip it open. I’ve seen this one time on an ankle wrap, like if you have a bad ankle, like an ice wrap and stuff like that. I talked to a client and they were like I can’t put the packaging behind the product. I’m like, hey, technically you can’t put the guy’s foot, that’s on the product, but you can have the guy’s foot there and the ankle wrap around the foot.
John:
I mean image guidelines. People tend to think that that’s terms of service and I’m a big advocate that there is nothing in terms of service on Amazon that says anything about images. Images are held to image guidelines and so the worst thing that can happen when you break image guideline you get an image, a listing suppression, that it’s fixed in two minutes. People don’t understand the risk reward there. If I make this image, it could drastically change your CTR. You’re getting more clicks even if your conversion stays the same. If your conversion stays the same and you get more clicks, that’s more money in your pocket. It’s simple math, right. But if it doesn’t work, you just revert back to your old image. But what are you losing versus what are you risking, right, or what are you getting? So I think to me that’s one of the most important things is getting that main hero image clickable. And a lot of folks Amazon themselves, Kevin with Amazon basics and Amazon happy belly and all the nonsense stuff that they rip off from other you know, white label, private label people they’re like, oh, this is great, let me just do it ourselves as Amazon Basics. They do this because, at the end of the day, if they’re not allowed to show the packaging, then how come on Amazon Basics they show for men’s razor blade. They’ll show the packaging. They’ll show the blade handle. They’ll show the three different blade cartridges. They’ll have a box that says three blade cartridge, men’s shaver. But if you look at the listings and the reviews that people actually get. None of that stuff is there. None of that packaging is there? Right? Amazon breaks their own rules because what they’re doing is they understand if it’s in the best interest for the customer. If anything that you’re doing in your main hero image is putting the buyer’s shopping experience first, you can be sure that you will not have a problem.
John:
Now, one last thing to say with that if you’re in the media space, the book space, the apparel space, the footwear space, anything I just said is not for you. You’re in the corner by yourself. Amazon is super strict with. You can’t even, Kevin, show a shoe box in a pair of shoes. You can only show one shoe and it has to be a certain angle, and I attribute that to Amazon acquiring Zappos years ago. That anything Amazon either started or has their claws into, that’s hands off. But if you’re in supplements, if you’re in health and beauty, la Roche-Posay and the only reason I know that because my wife buys it on subscribe and save it’s like a $40 or $50 a bottle face wash. It’s a $2 million listing right, just that one alone. And they have the bottle and they have a pool behind it of the serum or the gel and that’s their signature moving forward and I was like, oh my God, this is amazing. Why are more people not doing this? So you’ll start to see more, as people like me talk about it for creams, for lotions. You’re getting the smear. Beef tallow or suet tallow is a big thing right now on Amazon. Everyone’s going after being the next beef tallow or tallow brand. I couldn’t even tell you what tallow does, but everyone’s doing it. Now you’re seeing the smear behind of the tallow, because people need to see what’s inside the jar before they click.
Kevin King:
So tell me about the people. Who are these audiences on PickFu? Some people always wonder who are these people that are. I’m choosing this audience of barbecue lovers or of high income people. In the beginning I know there was a lot of mechanical turks and stuff and they’ve gone away from that. Are these just people sitting that stay at home moms? Are these people that, just like I, just want to make some extra money and get paid 25 cents a vote while I’m watching TV at night and just clicking on some things? Who are these people?
John:
All right, Kevin, I’ll give you just between me and you. I’ll tell you who it really is. It’s me. It’s just me sitting there just replying to. No, so the best way I tell people you understand mechanical turks, mTurks and stuff like that, the best way I tell people we’re a network of now 18 million respondents. If you’ve ever watched the news, we’re in election year, it’s over. But any time you turn on the news, 75% of Americans think this. 40% of Americans think this is the next thing. 36% of teachers in your area say this. Those are the areas and the communities and the networks that we’re tapping into. So, like the mTurks, the this, the that. But the real special sauce with PickFu is that we reject any non-meaningful response, whereas a lot of other providers that are the big boys you get what you get, like my daughter says when she comes back from first grade, my teacher said you get what you get and you don’t get upset, right. That’s what they’re taught in school. Like, you can’t get upset, you get what you get. Not with PickFu right. So with us, anything that’s a non-meaningful response. Our algo kicks it out and keeps pulling to get the meaningful response. So never get someone as a response on PickFu that says sure, I’ll pick A and they’ll just write sure.
John:
Or have you ever seen those frustrating Amazon reviews where it’s like one star, no, like what do you mean? Give me a one star and just say no, you know what I mean. Like, give me the review right, so you’ll never get that. But honestly, when you really drill it down and people ask me, like what are the people paid? How much do they get? Is it really meaningful what they’re saying? And I tell people that are concerned about it run your first well-created PickFu where you’re talking to that ICP. People know if you’re in the barbecue sauce space. If you’re targeting people who are avid let’s say Amazon Prime subscribers that are men, for this example, that are men. Let’s say it’s expensive sauce, it’s 75k or more a year income. That hobbies, or barbecue or whatever let’s say it’s at that. You’ll see in the responses by the way that they write ah, this is my avatar, they’re saying, they’re speaking my language. They said the keyword that my ingredient has this Dijon mustard, and he knew in that when he replied I like that Dijon mustard because it has a good flavor. You start to really see the magic inside of the responses and a lot of other stuff that’s out there. You don’t get to see that and I think that’s important with PickFu.
Kevin King:
What’s the difference of using PickFu going to PickFu.com or using Helium 10 audiences? Or is it the exact same thing?
John:
So the the benefits of audiences and Helium 10 is you don’t have to go anywhere else it’s integrated already in H10 and it’s there.
Kevin King:
What’s the most you’ve ever seen someone spend in a month on there. Someone just went crazy like spent 20 grand doing testing one month because they had a bunch of products.
John:
Individual or like enterprise company?
Kevin King:
Yeah, enterprise doesn’t count because those guys have, you know, most of the people listening to this podcast or–
John:
Yeah, I will say. I will say most expensive. I’ve pulled poll I’ve seen for private label, white label kind of brand that was doing decent business. Not much. It’s probably about 12 grand on one poll like one really monster poll with multi questions and a lot of data behind it. But it’s not unheard of for brands to do anywhere from you know, 10 to 20k a month throughout all their testing and different iterations.
Kevin King:
I mean it’s it’s money well spent if you do it right.
John:
Yeah, no totally.
Kevin King:
If you do it right, it’s money well spent. Well, John, this has been great. We can keep shooting the shit here for a while, but so if people want to reach out, if they want to check out PickFu, how would they do that? If they want to follow you on LinkedIn, I know you have a new newsletter that you just started on LinkedIn as well, I believe.
John:
I got two newsletters. I have one I scale back a little bit I have the weekly click where I put out weekly news on LinkedIn, and one is a daily ace and teardown which I have to get back into, but that was a daily newsletter. You know, Kevin, you’re the king of newsletters. They’re not easy to keep up with. So for a period of time I had a stint of doing a daily teardown. I’m going to work on doing that like a little bit more of a cadence than weekly, but maybe not so much daily.
Kevin King:
Yeah. A third 60-minute window to your schedule there. You got the–
John:
Yeah. A third—
Kevin King:
A lunchtime 60-minute window.
John:
Yeah, but yeah, John Aspinall, on LinkedIn, PickFu.com. I always try and say PickFu without sounding like I’m telling somebody off. So I don’t say P-I-C-K-F-U, I say P-I-C-K-F-U and I just kind of go through that. So it does it because I’m from New York. I already sound aggressive as enough half the time when I’m talking about stuff. So, yeah, PickFu.com Also, I will also supply you with after. So probably in the comments, wherever you’re posting it, I’ll give you the link. It’s actually our PickFu main image guide playbook. It’s a super good playbook for optimizing your main hero image where it’s walking step by step how we would test it in-house with our team. So if you want to be able to test that, you’ll have that there as well.
Kevin King:
Or maybe you could set that up at pickfu.com/H10 or something that way, if people listening just set up a pickfu.com/H10 and H-1-0. Maybe you can set that up so that people are driving down the road they can remember that. Awesome. I just have one other quick question before we go when do I pick up the briefcase?
John:
Listen for anyone that’s listening about this. I had seen some news about Kevin’s glorious Dream 100 team and I see a lot of people getting added to that. So I’d asked Kevin. I said, Kevin, I’m building my britches, I’m becoming a little bit of a name, not a king name, but more of an entry-level knight name. We’ll say that. And what have I got to do to become maybe a dream 101, maybe make some room for me? Kevin had said 150k cash and I said it was in a silver suitcase. I said I only have a gold suitcase, so I recently just bought on Amazon Prime a silver suitcase, so I have the money for Kevin. Kevin joke’s on you. If you’ve ever seen any kind of crime movie, half of those are counterfeit. The other half are monopoly that are also rigged with ink explosion devices. So the proper authorities can get you and I would take over for a billion dollars.
Kevin King:
Sounds like a deal. Awesome, cool man. You never know. You never know if you’ll be. Uh, who’s in there? Uh, there’s 34 people as of this recording of a hundred, and I don’t, I don’t tell anybody, they don’t even know till it comes out. Uh, in in the newsletter. Uh, it’s all totally random. You’re not the only one that’s asked me. I have quite a few people like what do I got to do? Why is so-and-so there and why am I not there yet? I should be there before this person. And it’s interesting, when I first put it out, Tomer was the first one, Tomer Ravinovich, and just the way it came out of the hat and I messaged him, he’s like oh thanks, appreciate it, that’s very kind of you. And then the next one. But after about five or six people started catching on and now it’s become something that and we’re doing a lot of stuff. I’m doing a Think Tank, which you’d be welcome to come out to in February as well. In Austin we did one in September that went exceptionally well. We have 12 people that come in. They sit in a hot seat and we do this think tank. I bring in the top, I bring in the Dream 100 and people that may or may not be in the Dream 100. I can never say. Other experts, other quality experts, so you never know, you never know. But yeah, we can chat about that.
John:
All I’ll say, Kevin, is you know I’m not trying to gain the system, but uh, the fields are looking very green for unlimited PickFu usage, if I happen to stumble into those. That’s all I’m saying. I’m like you can read the line for what you want, you know.
Kevin King:
Oh shoot. 20,000 a month. Oh wow, that could be. That could be more than 150 in fake monopoly money.
John:
Hey, I’m making commitments I can’t back down between that too.
Kevin King:
John, the other John at PickFu, you heard that right. Hey, John, it’s been great talking to you man. I appreciate you coming on the AM/PM Podcast.
John:
Thanks, pal. We’ll see you soon.
Kevin King:
Thanks again for staying to the end of this podcast. I hope you got some good value. That was a great discussion with John. Awesome stuff, actionable, tactical things that’s what we always try to deliver here on the AM/PM Podcast. We’ll be back again next week with another awesome episode talking about ranking so with one of the top ranking experts in the Amazon space. You don’t want to miss that episode. In the meantime, I hope you’ve having a great new year and we’ll see you again next time. Before we go, just got some words of wisdom for you. Remember marketing is a battle of perception, not always just product. Marketing is a battle of perception, not only just product, and that applies to why you should be using services like PickFu or Helium 10 Audiences. See you next week.
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