Reflections on Amazon's Seven Years of Sales Experience

详细说明

Eric Ye Zhilong , who has seven years of experience as an Amazon seller , combined his own experience and shared the changes in Amazon over the years. In the prospect of cross-border e-commerce in 2017 , many of our traditional factories and trading companies are thinking about transforming into cross-border e-commerce, and Eric has labeled himself a "buyer who has been transforming".

I am a cross-border e-commerce seller myself. I have been in the industry for seven years. I believe that there are not many people here, because among the people I know, I really don’t realize that I have been on Amazon longer than me, but now It seems that it is not a happy thing, because the listing of the listing, the financing of the financing...

The label I define for myself is a seller who has been transforming.

Why do you say that ? Because from the beginning of entering the industry in 2009 to the present, from a few people to the present, to now more than 50 people, not big or small, because they have experienced too many things and made too many mistakes, so they have always been in the industry . Transformation, so the pits I have stepped on are probably not as many as I am. I have been working on Amazon for seven years, only Amazon, and less than a year in the middle of doing EBAY . Later, I found out that it was not the material, so I gave up. At present, there are more than 50 people in the company, and the sales volume has just exceeded 100 million this year. I believe this is the case. Many sellers have a psychological threshold, because we are all in the process of growth. Although the sales volume is not large, the per capita output value is gradually rising. I hope that next year, the sales volume will double without adding ten people.

Let me share my thoughts on Amazon's experience in the past seven years.

The first content I share today is those years of Amazon sellers. The Amazon I am talking about here is not a brand owner. I think most of them are still at the seller stage, not the brand owner stage. The second shared content is the universal formula for the creation of explosive models. When you see this title, your eyes may light up at once. It turns out that there is also a universal formula for creating explosive models. The third is the product competitiveness model, because I have always made mistakes and summed up over the years. I have a lot of experience. I consider myself an academic seller, because I like to summarize and make these into things that can be implemented. The fourth is to talk about the future development direction of sellers, because at the end of 2016, everyone is summing up the past and planning for the future.

Those years of Amazon sellers, when it comes to those years of sellers, there must be a timetable. Mr. Xu talked about cross-border e-commerce, and I talked about myself. I joined Amazon in early 2009, and I was still studying in 2009 . In my junior year, I couldn’t find a part-time job during the summer vacation, so I joined a company as customer service and found a full-time job with a salary of 2,000. Later, I found that the salary of 2,000 was higher than that of a part-time job. The salary was too high and I was reluctant to leave. , took more than 3,000 yuan, I think the salary is very high, so I stumbled into this industry by mistake. In 2009 , a big buzzword was hijacking , and I only knew how to hijack, because hijacking was too easy to issue orders, hundreds of orders a day, and the profit was very high, but this era is gone forever.

I graduated in 2011 , and I already had two years of Amazon experience when I graduated, so I have a suggestion for all the bosses here. When recruiting, you can stop setting up academic certificates. Maybe you will recruit people like Amazon. people like me.

When I just graduated, I wanted to start a business. My boss didn’t support me because I didn’t have any funds or experience. So I came to Shenzhen after graduation and joined a company. Look, so I graduated in 2011 and joined a company. I was fired because I read the news at work. This reason is quite interesting, so I urge everyone not to watch the news at work. I will talk about some key words later, some may be unfamiliar, and some will be clearer. Behind each key word is a bonus. I didn’t step on each bonus, but basically I came here on the last train of the bonus.

The first one was FBA . At that time, no one dared to do it, and no one knew how to do it, so we also made a preliminary attempt. The second term is Featured Merchant . Those who entered the industry late may not have heard of it, but it was canceled later. Later inIn 2013 , a large number of sellers flooded in. China’s Amazon team was established and began to attract investment. One of the dividends was branding, because there were few brands at that time, and then CPC , and then the fierce competition stage, VC , VE , black technology, etc. Wait, when VC and VE are just launched, everyone will enter. Will the functions inside be used after entering ? If you can use it, it will be very, very helpful to your brand promotion. This thing is in front of you. Whether you understand it or not, if you understand it, you will develop very fast. Then there is Reviewer , I don’t understand it, so I came here on the last train of the bonus, and then SNS and Facebook. At that time, Facebook was very effective. These are bonuses. You can compare how many bonuses you have stepped on. If you step on a few, the development will be very fast, if not, you will fall behind. This year is to ban Reviewer and ban FBA . Because of the strict rules, there is a store that was closed in turn in various countries this year. Because I sold my own brand products without authorization, I was closed first, and then I was asked to provide authorization, and then opened to me. It happened to be at the end of November . At that time, it was shut down during Black Friday, so this year I suffered a lot of losses. There is a saying that I want to die. But no matter what, the same sentence, Amazon has abused me thousands of times, and I treat him like first love, because we rely on this platform.

Everyone is very much looking forward to creating a popular universal formula. I would like to talk about the data, our new store performance growth examples, 2015In 2019, the number of stores opened worldwide increased. Sales began in July, with more than 1,000 US dollars in July, 400,000 in October, and 1.76 million US dollars in December. This is a relatively benchmark data created through this universal formula, because at that time The competition in the industry is not so fierce, and we also know that this set of methods can be used, so we can quickly build a store. To achieve this performance, you don’t just need to know how to do it. There are many resources hidden behind it. The first one is funds. There is no fund. You definitely can't support sales.

Speaking of the universal formula, there are four points. Since it is a formula, no matter who it is, as long as it is not stupid, it can be done after seeing this formula. After it is systematized, everyone can compare how it is doing, and can benchmark the current practice. Rate yourself how far you are from them with what you are doing so far.

1. Listing optimization, titles, keywords, key points, descriptions, pictures, prices, many courses tell you how to do keywords, how to write key points, how to write descriptions, how to set prices, and how to set pictures.

2. The acquisition of reviews, the acquisition of three types of reviews : text, pictures, and videos , because promotion must have reviews , otherwise it will be greatly discounted.

3. Advertisement drainage, on-site CPC , VC , VE advertisement, FB advertisement and so on.

4. Many people have questions about in-site flash kills and out-of-site deals . I am doing the same thing now. Why is it still not achieving the effect I want? I will leave this question for everyone to think about for a minute.

I didn't release the most core thing, the most core thing is the order, if you don't have the support of the order, no matter how good the optimization is, the sales ranking will not go up, and the keyword ranking will not go up either.

What happens after the order is decomposed ? One is traffic, the other is conversion rate. Follow these two main lines to see, one is Listing optimization, and the other is ReviewAcquisition, no matter how much traffic comes in, no conversion will be formed, and the weight will only continue to decrease. I gave you the traffic, but you did not form conversions and orders, which is a waste. The second is traffic. After all is done, how many advertisements are smashed? Since the conversion rate can be guaranteed to reach 10% or even 30% , a lot of money is spent on traffic. How to smash it ? On-site CPC , VC/VE , FB advertisements, etc. Wait, if looking at a person's ability to advertise is to look at how much money you spend on advertising, if you can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on Amazon, then you almost know how to spend money. Because especially in the current situation of fierce competition, smashing advertisements is a must, and you can’t be soft-hearted. Once you stop, it will all be wasted. Amazon has a supportive attitude, and new products will be easier to push.

Continue to talk about the fourth point, which is the in-site flash kill and listing optimization, because you have an order before you can push it outside the site. So if a product costs $ 50 and sells it for $ 10 , your sales ranking will go up, but will your keyword ranking go up ? It will definitely go up, so the core of understanding what you just said is orders and traffic .

Because it is installed in the mind, this is the TIP taught by the university teacher . This is the method that I have summed up to be able to land.

I believe everyone has the experience of dealing with the factory. When everyone chats with the factory, you ask how the factory’s products are, and the factory will tell you that my products are the best and the quality is the best. Once you put them on the shelves, you will find that they are all nonsense. , all of which are not as good as what he said. Cross-border e-commerce sellers are more pragmatic and will say that their products are not that good. Now that we talk about models, how can we make an objective evaluation of our products, because the factory says my product is very good, but how can I see if it is good? To compete, how to promote it, because the competition is too fierce, the mobile power supply is not impossible to promote, but it will cost a lot of money, which is completely unnecessary.

The model of product competitiveness is cost, technology, quality, USP and CEM .

1. Cost, what is cost ? The factory told me that it is competitive, and I will give you a formula to calculate. If there is a price war, how much cheaper can you be than others ? 20%? 50%? Preferably more than 50% . This is what makes your price competitive. What can we do ? Let’s start a price war. The price we can do is the best price war that others dare not match. This is the best price war, but I have always been quite repulsed because the price is very effective. How can we sell 50 dollars for 10 dollars ? Don’t go out ? But it seems wrong for building a brand. You can’t always rely on price wars, because there is no minimum price war, only lower, so I don’t agree with this approach, but it’s very effective, and I still have to do it , You can optimize your product and supply chain, and straighten out all the supply. It takes three or four months to make a product, because you want the factory to make it cheaper and you can only do it slowly.

2.Technology, does it have unique technical advantages or marketing concepts? It is impossible to talk about technical advantages, because for electronic products, what technical advantages does a mobile power supply have ? Isn’t it the TI solution ? Even TI has a higher The model does not have any advantages, at most it is some software optimization. Since there is no particularly big breakthrough in technology, we will start from the marketing concept and make a marketing concept. Compared with your competitors, you will have a technical and definitional advantage. , at least you are competitive.

3. Quality, everyone said that their quality is the best and the best, and their own company also said that there is no problem, and the defect rate of random inspection is 1/1000. I also made mistakes before. Do you think that after the full inspection, the quality of your products will be better? ? 1% defect rate ofeach full inspection , if you do ten times, there will be a 10% defect rate. Ten times is still a 1% defect rate, so that the product quality can be said to be good. There are standards for good product quality. Which standard does the company currently implement, 0.1% or 1% or even higher ? Everyone finds that they will relax internally, and even 2% internally accept it. In fact, the psychological line has not been set. The content shared today is a summary, and the company did not talk about it, so everyone must know their quality standards. If you are 1% , you will be stuck at 1%., Don’t let it go, there will be endless disasters after you let it go, because our Amazon’s stockpiling is caused by this reason, and it is a lesson for millions, so you must have a scale.

4. CEM , customer experience management. In fact, whether it is packaging or instructions, it is customer experience management. How to manage this experience ? There is a word called touch points. The various points where customers touch your products form an impression of your brand. It is subdivided into packaging instructions, Web page pictures, and even the instruction manual at the moment of opening the package, in fact, you can subdivide it. All the touchpoints are subdivided, how much will be improved this month, how much will be improved next month, and the management fee is easy to do. Everything is quantified. What I am afraid of is that there is no quantification and no landing, because you have feelings, ideals, and goals, but others can't get your points, and chickens and ducks can't communicate.

5. USP , in fact, is whether a product has a selling point. The most feared thing in marketing is a mediocre product. Everything is strong, everything is the same as others, and there is nothing different. You must extract the unique selling point. What is written on the PPT is not important, what is important is what has not been mentioned yet, the most important thing is to quantify this thing , and decompose it according to the management model of your own company. Your annual goal has come out, and your annual goal What is the goal ? Product, quality, technology, so if there is a table, the competitiveness will be stronger.

The future development direction of sellers - localization + specialization, I believe everyone is also thinking about what to do next year, including what Mark said in the morning, they also need to go to a meeting to communicate with sellers, how will everyone develop next year, how to do it, how they will follow the supporting facilities, This page PPTIt is not only useful for sellers, but also for service providers. Service providers can also find their own direction in it.

1. Customer service localization, it is best to have telephone customer service, because as a brand, you do not have a local thing, and you do not have any local image to show to customers, it is difficult to show that you are a local brand, or to compare Excellent brand, at least have a telephone customer service. Our negative reviews are removed by telephone customer service. It would be much better to have a telephone customer service to communicate directly. You can also add an after-sales maintenance later, because the goods in the back may become bigger and bigger, because the competition for small goods is becoming more and more fierce, such as selling jewelry may be small, but when you sell electronic products, the more you sell, the bigger it is. You can’t throw them all away. Now that the goods cost tens of dollars, you can throw them away as soon as you need to, but you may feel heartache later. This is also an after-sales improvement.

2. Marketing localization, in fact, everyone understands it, but they don’t understand it when they do it. Suppose you promote Yingxionghui in China, you promote Yingxionghui in the United States, and you promote it on Weibo and WeChat. Can Weibo work? ? Even if you play around, you can’t keep up with hot spots if you don’t watch Chinese news or current events in China, so the best thing is to find a local marketing company. We’ve also talked about local marketing companies, and they will also base your budget on your budget. Let me ask you, how much do you want to budget? I said 20,000 US dollars, and he said it was only 20,000 US dollars. I said it was too high, and he made another 10,000 US dollars. In fact, there are many such companies in the United States. It’s rare and cheap, but how much is it to recruit someone who can localize marketing in China ? It’s not necessarily successful, and it’s even harder to find a good FB . I’m not saying that the ability is poor, he lacks cultural genes and sensitivity.

3. Warehousing localization, FBA+ overseas warehouses, I don’t know if you have read the peak season bills of Amazon’s account, there is a storage fee, I don’t know how much you have, anyway, we are hundreds of thousands, because Amazon has a storage fee during the peak season Is it according to 4 times or 5 timesThe price is charged twice, so it is very high, so don’t avoid finding overseas warehouses for cheap. The other is the risk. Now Amazon is getting more and more strict. There are hundreds of goods in the warehouse and you have no pressure. But when there are hundreds of thousands of goods, a pending order seals your account. How do you get out of stock ? The round-trip shipping fee for a product is 1.5 US dollars, 100,000 , and 150,000 US dollars have all come out, and the risk is very high. I used to like to focus on one account very much, but after doing this this year, I am very afraid. Now I try to spread the accounts as much as possible, because if you want to close it, one account will not be affected. When dozens of people in your company are waiting for you to eat At that time, the company had no income, and the pressure was very great. So next year's trend is FBA+ overseas warehouse, that is, shipping to overseas warehouses and transferring to FBA . There is a certain cost, but for companies with a certain scale, the risk will be reduced. Risk is the first. You can earn less, but you Can't close down tomorrow.

4. The category specialization that everyone is talking about is actually a positioning. You try not to cross categories, because there are too many temptations for e-commerce companies with trading backgrounds, and there are opportunities to make money everywhere. When you see mother and baby products, do it Maternal and infant products, if you see that mobile power supply is easy to make, make a mobile power supply. The market is full of temptations.After searching1688In terms of globalization, it is best for a brand not to cross categories, but to focus on core values. We are also thinking about this. After doingPPTfound that there is no core value, because you don’t have the ability to continue to grow. What do you do after a letter?Now we all tell brand stories, and the companies that are listed now are all crushed by their opponents. , They are not in the mood to think about this matter, they have to work hard for performance, because if the performance cannot be achieved, they will either lose money or lose shares, and everyone will have a gambling agreement.
This is my thinking about what to do next year, and I myself rely on these aspects. I think there are two aspects to the future development direction, no matter which aspect is done around a question, what is your core competitiveness, as long as you contact a venture capital, he will definitely ask you what your core competitiveness is, Is there a moat, because the moat is very important. For those domestic technology companies, what is lacking is money, and money is a booster. If you give you 100 million, the number of users may increase by ten or a hundred times.

I just said that I am a seller who has been transforming, and I am also discussing and thinking about going to the brand. Then there is the channel business, because you either make the brand very powerful, or you make the channel very powerful, and all of them are in your hands, which means that you have core competitiveness. What should you do with the brand?Borrownow A very popular term is product thinking, and the one on the right is traffic thinking. Our energy is too limited to do products and channel cooperation. If you want to make products and do research and development, how much money do you invest every year? We have established more than 100 people. Can the research and development department afford it?Because it is very expensive, and it is difficult to achieve results. Everyone who does e-commerce is poor. They have no cash in their hands and they are all in the goods. So when you have no cash, what do you use to invest in research and development? So in my opinion , To do product + channel cooperation, it is OK to master one channel . If you are good at Amazon, you can do Amazon. At least I don’t rely on Amazon, I can promote it myself, and Amazon’s sales are not lost at all. I can devote more energy to product research and development. Do you have the energy to complete each platform ? No, the nature and rules of the platform are set by others, and the rules are constantly changing, so you have to keep learning. So I think it is better to increase channel cooperation. We also want to go in this direction next year, but how to go is still in the process of trial and error. I don’t know how to do it, but we will try it step by step. The second is traffic thinking. With so many platforms, you give up the thinking of making products yourself, because once you make products, you will be very unprofessional. How professional are you in making molds? Do you know what steel is used for molds ? This requires A lot of time is spent on digging deep into the supply chain and what kind of chips you use, but if you specialize in channels, do a good job, and are proficient in all channels, I believe you will also have strong competitiveness. You have so many channels. If you sell a few hundred of them casually, they add up to a lot. Many factories are looking for cooperation with trading e-commerce companies, but none of the trading e-commerce companies are willing to do it ! Because they are willing to make their own brands, they all think that they want to make their own brands. In fact, they only have trademarks, so they can Find some excellent brands to cooperate with. Excellent brands have patents and appearance designs, so you don’t need to think about it. Next year’s new models have already been considered for you, but this also requires establishing a more in-depth cooperation. There will be a situation in China that you will be dumped when you develop too big, why doesn’t it appear now (



This kind of cooperation between brand factories and trade e-commerce ) is a state of distrust when you get dumped when you grow up.

There is another kind of service provider. The advantage of service providers is that they don’t need to pledge goods, and all they earn are cash. Moreover, this industry is very large and can spawn a lot of service providers. Maybe many sellers will also transform to do service provider training. also possible.