Hey there, Amazon sellers! Manny Coats here with an incredible Black Friday-Cyber Monday story that you won’t believe. I want to share how I generated over $19,940 on two new Amazon products that I just launched, with a profit of $7,602—and I did it over Thanksgiving weekend.
That’s $7,602 in PROFIT in 3 days (from Friday through Sunday) on two new Amazon products that are in a CROWDED niche. I did this with only two product reviews (one now has 6 reviews, and the other has 13.)
But wait, there’s more! The next day was Cyber Monday. On that day, I sold $19,235.01 with a profit of around $7,300 (that accounts only for landed product costs, FBA, and Amazon fees.)
That’s a grand total of $39,167.63 in sales and a profit of $16,156.97 on only TWO brand new Amazon products with just TWO REVIEWS each!
You may be wondering if I ran a ton of sponsored ads? Actually, the answer is no. I only ran less than $200 in ads per product on Cyber Monday and roughly half of that amount on each of the three days before that.
So how did I do it?
The answer is to find a keyword phrase that has a lot of search volume that is very tightly focused on what you’re selling.
And then once you have that, the BIG SECRET is…You ready for this? It’s MATH.
Math is the key to success. If you have enough data, you can make smart decisions using mathematical formulas.
You want to sell a specific number of units per day over a set number of days at a substantial discount, driving users to Amazon through a custom 2 step URL.
Here’s how I used math to generate $16,156.97 in PROFIT over that four day period:
First of all, I want to say something you probably won’t be surprised at: I only used the tools in Helium 10 to do this. If you don’t already have the Helium 10 Chrome extension or haven’t signed up to Helium 10 (even as a FREE user) do it now. You’re at a disadvantage otherwise.
Let me get back to explain how I generated $16,156.97 in PROFIT in 4 days.
Here’s how I did it:
- I took the top 5 ASINs in my product niche regarding number of product reviews they each had and ran each of those ASINS through the Cerebro
- I selected all five ASINS from the history page in Cerebro and exported them to combine all lists and remove the duplicates.
- I also ran what I thought my main keyword phrase should be through the Magnet tool; I wanted to get as many keywords as possible and export them.
- I combined all the keyword lists and sorted everything by most search volume in the “Exact Phrase” column that Magnet and Cerebro give you. I spent a couple of hours manually going through all keyword phrases.
If you want to have a successful business, you have to spend time doing this, folks. You wouldn’t believe how many people I hear say that they just paste every keyword they can find into their listing, related or not. That’s not good.
Here’s how I parse out the good keywords from the bad:
I separate them out into four groups:
- VERY RELATED
- RELATED
- SOMEWHAT RELATED
- NOT RELATED
An example of this would be if I were selling a tactical flashlight:
- VERY RELATED: Tactical Flashlight
- RELATED: LED Flashlight
- SOMEWHAT RELATED: Night Light
- NOT RELATED: Police Baton
I will say it again: It’s CRITICAL that you spend time going through these keywords for your Amazon products. Cerebro and Magnet are great at finding tons of gold nugget phrases, but you have to use your brain to filter things correctly.
- I put the VERY RELATED keywords into my title. RELATED keywords went into the bullets and backend search terms. SOMEWHAT RELATED keywords got peppered throughout the listing wherever they made sense.
- I chose my primary keyword phrase from the VERY RELATED field.
- I used the CPR method for ranking by using Cerebro to see the number of units I needed to sell each day for eight days.
If you don’t know what the CPR method is, perhaps because this is your first time visiting Helium 10, listening to the AMPM Podcast, or are not part of our Facebook group yet, then here’s some insight: “CPR” stands for Cerebro Product Rank. Cerebro is a keyword research tool that starts with you entering a competitor’s ASIN; choose one with the most reviews on it, and then Cerebro finds all kinds of juicy keyword phrases.
Now here’s the vital part: every keyword phrase in Cerebro has a column that shows the estimated search volume for that keyword. The Amazon products data you get from Cerebro is what you want to base your keyword decisions around. The CPR method uses this search volume to calculate approximate sales volumes and how many units of your product you need to sell per day for eight days to rank to page 1 (hopefully the top of page 1) for that keyword phrase with high accuracy.
Typically, when you first start out with a new product, nobody knows who you are, and you’re buried on page 20 on Amazon for your desired search term. One way to jump to the top of page one for your new Amazon products is to get a lot of sales quickly using the special 2-step storefront URL I taught previously here on the blog. You will want to give out coupon codes for your product so that you can quickly sell the number of units needed per day to achieve this result. I typically give coupons that discount the product 80-90% so that I know I will sell all of the units I have set aside for this promotion that day. Sell that number of units for eight days and BAM! I now have a page 1 ranked keyword for my product.
This method only works when using a two-step URL that will contain your keyword phrase. The process of generating this custom URL is outlined in a video I made at Helium10.com/cpr.
Anyway, back to Cerebro—look at how many total daily sales you need and multiply that by eight days. There’s a new column that does this math for you and tells you the total number of sales (or “giveaways” as I call them) in eight days.
- I created that many coupon codes, dropping the price to just $2 per unit after code redemption. For reference, my products were under $20 for this case study. And yes, I will lose money in the short term to position myself nicely for organic sales. If you’re selling a more expensive product, you need to price it at a point that it’s irresistible to people and they must buy the product in fear they will miss out on such a great opportunity. An 80% to 90% discount is just the right trigger to get them to do this.
- I used a combination of services to give away the coupon codes (we posted a video on our blog on how to do this yourself through Facebook offers.)
- As I mentioned earlier, the promotion lasts eight days. Usually, halfway through, there is a massive jump in rank. I keep pushing all eight days when possible. It’s essential to push eight days so that you have solid sales history for at least one week. Otherwise, you might fall off the first page quickly. The Amazon search engine algorithm loves sales over time, so give it no less than seven days. That’s why we use eight days—because it works.
Before the promotion started, there were some other things I did:
- I used the Scribbles tool to ensure that I used every keyword phrase in my listing and missed nothing.
- I added ALL of these keywords to the Keyword Tracker tool; I always want to see where I am rank and where I fall for all keywords after a promotion ends. I also make tweaks each week and want to know how those tweaks affect the search term rankings.
- I used the Inventory Protector tool to set my ASINS to one unit per customer to make sure I don’t have the same customer coming back and redeeming code after code (We have all seen this happen before). You only want one customer buying one unit during your launch.
- I added the product to Hijacker Alert to monitor for fraudulent copycats trying to take my sales.
- I used a quality photographer to shoot all the HD photos. Very important! Don’t use your cell phone. Hire a professional.
- When the promotion was over, I made sure that my product was more appealing than all the others above and below me on page 1 for the keyword phrase I went after. If I didn’t achieve this, people would buy the others, and I would fall in the rankings.
My pricing has to be as good or better than similar products. You’d be surprised what a $1 difference can do to your conversions.
I launched both products with just two reviews. At the time of this article, several days later, one still only has 6 reviews, and the other has 13.
I should also mention that I purchased a full container of products (approximately 10,000 units of each). This bulk purchase drove my manufacturing cost per unit down substantially and gave me preferential treatment by my supplier over a lot of smaller buyers. I feel this allowed me to compete with the big boys in this niche on pricing, and the smaller guys couldn’t compete at all without losing money.
And that folks is my secret launch strategy! Not so secret after all!
- Create a kick-ass listing full of impressive images and keywords that are strategically placed
- Use the C.P.R. method to know exactly how many products to sell via coupon-discount every single day for eight days straight.
- Make sure your pricing after the promotion is better than other ASINS on page 1 for that search term
- Track everything via Keyword Tracker, so you know when and where to make changes. A super cool feature I use a lot is that you can add notes on Keyword Tracker to any keyword on any day. If you’re not using Keyword Tracker, you’re missing out.
Let me mention a few other things:
I found one of my suppliers on Alibaba and another supplier through a sourcing agent that I met while I was in China. I used this sourcing agent previously for my Halloween product.
I ship everything over by ocean freight to save massive costs—this way I can compete well in pricing. However, there’s one little hack I do here that is important. Very important:
I time things so that by the time the sea shipment arrives at Amazon; my listing is all ready to go, looks great, has a couple of reviews, and is already ranked or in the process of having my one primary keyword phrase ranked.
How do I do this?
I figure out how many units I need to give out with coupon codes over the eight days, and then I add another dozen or so to that number; I then have them express-aired out to Amazon, so they get there well in advance of the primary order. I use these units for the CPR method of ranking, and also to get some reviews.
I also use them to get the product to the photographer to take great images, and maybe even send some over to influencers. I didn’t do the influencer part this time around, but I will be doing that in the future.
I run a little sponsored ads traffic on both with an auto campaign and also a manual campaign for exact match phrase using keywords from the VERY RELEVANT list I created earlier.
My bids are kept pretty low for this sponsored ads PPC traffic, usually to where I won’t hit more than $100 to $200 per day in ad spend. If I am reaching my budget, then I am spending too much per click, and I lower it until I no longer go over my daily budget. This method usually nets me cheap clicks a nice ACOS (Advertising Costs of Sales).
Even if I don’t get any sponsored ads traffic during the launch, it’s not a big deal. The goal here is to use the CPR method to get my main keyword to rank.
And in the old days, a lot of people used the sponsored ads reports to find new keywords from that auto campaigns, but Cerebro does an incredible job of showing you way more keywords in most cases, so I don’t use the auto campaigns for that anymore.
How cool is that? Pretty cool I think!
But hold on—it gets even BETTER! This next bit will seriously blow your mind!
Did you know that many other keyword phrases that you have in your title are most likely going to move up in the rankings as you get your daily sales through the CPR method? It’s true!
Every sale gives a little juice to your title keywords, and other places in your listing to a lesser extent. If you get enough sales going, a lot of your keyword phrases will go up in search results ranking even if people don’t buy using that keyword phrase. Now, how cool is THAT?!!!
If you’re wondering what tools I used for this whole thing, I almost exclusively used Helium 10 tools. For product research, I combined an internal tool we have with other product research tools out there that you may be familiar with like Jungle Scout. I like to back up research on multiple tools. Otherwise, it was all Helium 10.
When it comes to optimizing the listing, keyword research, and the number of units to give away during your launch, all of that is Helium 10. And I don’t just say that because I’m the founder—I say this because I built these tools to be the most accurate they can be to help me and the thousands of other users that have come to trust me and what our tools can do for them. You’re more than welcome to use whatever you want, but the one thing I urge you NOT to do is to use the CPR method to launch your product while using search volume data from another tool that isn’t from Helium 10. By doing so, you may overspend or not reach page 1.
I’ve personally launched four products in the past two months, and all of them have reached the very top of page 1 for the keywords we’ve targeted. It works, guys.
In terms of reviews—I’ve proven that you don’t need a lot to get started. The more the better, but I knew some people that really loved products similar to the two I was launching, so I was able to get them the products and get reviews. All four of the initial reviews were full priced purchases—two reviews per product. They were real reviews.
How long does it take from start to finish to get a new product into Amazon?
For me, it took about four months. The first few weeks were spent researching the product, checking the competition, researching what they are doing as best as I can, and so on. I would often scrap a product after a week of research and start over.
The next one to two months is typically spent ordering samples, testing, selecting the supplier, and then getting the supplier the specifications on what I need. I would then get sent the final product production sample that people will be buying, and then we are ready for launch.
It took my suppliers about a month to produce it all and then another month or so for it to get shipped over the ocean and into Amazon’s warehouses.
And remember guys, you will want to plan your re-order as well. It’s hard to say how successful a product is going to be after the launch, and especially during December, the numbers are so skewed anyway that it makes it even harder.
I know that my supplier is 60 days out from the time I place my order until it gets to Amazon, so I am already working with them on the next shipment to arrive here in January before the Chinese New Year closes up most of China; definitely, keep that in mind.
Guys, I hope this has not only been educational, but also inspiring to those of you that are just getting started, or maybe those of you that already have a product that you want to get a keyword phrase ranked for.
And make sure you surround yourself with other sellers that can help you along this journey. If you’re not already part of it, join the FBA High Rollers Facebook Group with over 26,000 Amazon sellers.
Until next time guys, keep on crushing it. Cheers! * UPDATE *
December 5, 2017
It’s been one week of additional sales with no promotions of any kind. In fact, I have had to raise the price on one of the products by a couple dollars. Things are looking good!
Results for the past seven days (Nov 28th through Dec 4th):
Product 1:
- Units Sold: 2,279
- Sales: $31,410.71
- Profit: $12,770.43
Product 2:
- Units Sold: 1,819
- Sales: $34,929.73
- Profit: $13,779.01
Total Sales: $66,340.44
Total Profit: $26,549.44
The above numbers are only for the two new products that were launched in November, and those numbers only include the past seven days AFTER the CPR launch period ended.
There’s about $2,200 spent total on sponsored ads that have not been removed from the above numbers. The rest is all organic sales. Since launch, these two products (in a very competitive niche) have already generated over $100,000 in sales and I expect they will generate over $250,000 before the end of the month.
I want to end this update by stating that I was wrong…wrong in terms of what I thought were the best keyword phrases. With Cerebro’s “exact match” search volume for every keyword, I can now dial in on the keywords that make the most sense for my product. Since we are now going into the Holiday shopping season, I would recommend that you not try to do any product launches for the remainder of December unless your product keywords are not inflated by Christmas shopping.
The reason is simple–every day that we get closer to Christmas, the search volume for Christmas related gift products goes up. So as the numbers get bigger and bigger for search volume, so does the number of giveaways you need during your launch. Wait until January, and then go hardcore for eight days. If you’re still not using the CPR method for launching your products, check it out here: https://www.helium10.com/cpr
Cheers!
– Manny Coats
Original post from How I Generated $39K in 4 Days with 2 New Amazon Products – Helium 10
