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?7 Ways Your Small Business to Make Money on Amazon. Please stan d by for realtime captions. realtime captions. Hi, greetings to everyone listening in to today's score live webinar. 7 ways for your small business to make money on Amazon. I'm with score. We'll be moderating this session. Our presenter today is Tara Darnley, who is the cofounder of "Dreams Inspire Reality Consulting." And an Amazon brand strategist teaching entrepreneurs how to scale their businesses, using the largest e-commerce platform in the world. Before Tara begins her presentation, I'll cover just a few housekeeping items. The webinar is one hour including time for audience questions after Tara's presentation. So if you do have any questions during the webinar, please submit those using the ask a question box located on the left-hand side of your screen. This is a live webinar and is being recorded. We'll be sending a link to the recording and the presentation slides to all participants in a post-event email that will go out just a little bit later on today. The slide deck and information to access the closed captioning transcript is located down at the lower left hand side of your screen or you can scroll down on your mobile device to access it there. I want to thank you all so much for joining us today. And I'd like to bring Tara on the line now to begin her presentation. 7 ways for your small business to make money on Amazon. Hello, everyone. I hope everyone is having a beautiful day today. My name is Tara Darnley. And thank you for such a warm welcome, alexa. Really appreciate that. So we are going to get started. So if you are joining now, please put in the comments section in the chat where you're joining from, so we can know where you're joining from. But we'll be able to answer all your questions at the end, as alexa mentioned. And I'm sure you guys are going to have a ton of questions after the information that's provided. I'm going to try my best to make sure I put as much information in a quick time frame, let's say 30 to 40 minutes, and then we'll use the rest of the time for Q & A because I really want to be able to answer all your questions. So today we're going to be talking about seven ways you can make money on Amazon today. If you are a service provider, this session is for you. If you are have a product, this session is also for you. So no one is going to be left out. I made sure I'm going to show you guys how you can make money on this platform because I know every, single person has purchased from Amazon at some point or another. It doesn't matter how you feel about the company. We've all purchased from this company and used its platform. So I wanted to look at it from a different perspective. Before I even assume that if you have purchased from Amazon, let me know in the comments section as well that you purchased from Amazon, right? So I'm going to start off by introducing myself. Again, my name is Tara Darnley. And I'm the cofounder of "Dreams Inspire Reality Consulting" as well as Darlyng & Co. which is a lifestyle baby brand. I'm a wife, a mom, a serial entrepreneur, a podcaster, an Amazon brand strategist and inventor and I have been featured in various publications such as black enterprise, ABC, Mary Claire, Steve Harvey show, essence, people, and even featured on Amazon's blog. And today you will be learning seven ways your small business can make money on Amazon. So we're going to be discussing a few things. So we are going to be talking about best selling categories on Amazon. We're going to be talking about how you can use your expertise ands to profit from the platform. We're going to be talking about trending services that will do amazing for 2020. And we're going to be talking about making money as an influencer. A lot of you guys are watching, you're probably an influencer or probably not monetizing that, you know, people like you and follow you. If you have thousands of followers and you haven't even been monetizing that, that's a problem. But we're going to fix that today and talk about much more. We're going to start with some data. I love data. I love data because data gives you a lot of proof that shows you, you know, all the proof and it's not just based on my words. Before I start, I do want to make a disclaimer because people normally get confused with this. I do not work for Amazon at all. I have been to their company. I have been, you know, we've done partnerships together based on my other brand because we've done so well on the platform. But I just started to help small businesses launch and grow their business on the platform because I realized that we were all consumers, right? We're all consumers of the platform but we weren't monetizing it. We weren't making money from it. So I wanted to turn it around after I was successful on the platform myself. So we're going to be showing -- I'm going to be showing you, rather, just some data and some facts that you probably did not know. As I'm going through these data, I want you to tell me in the comments what you're learning that you didn't know. Whatever you're learning new, please show me in the comments because I'm excited about these datas. So in 2018 alone, Amazon had over 100 million prime subscribers. That means they have recurring revenue every, single month because people like you, if you are a prime subscriber, put it in the comments section, but people like you and me, we're subscribed to their platform. We are subscribed, we're getting free shipping, we're getting a order in two days nowadays just launched a few months ago where you get your orders in 24 hours. Right? In 24 hours. So we're taking full advantage of that. So that's some of the benefits that Amazon is giving to their customers. That small business like us sometimes we can't compete with that. Right? Amazon has over 100,000 new sellers per month. And that has grown. These data is from 2018 and 2017. So we're in 2019. Those numbers are higher. I know for sure because I'm adding sellers every, single month to the platform as well. So I know that's changed. Over $177 billion in revenue in 2017. I'm sure you've seen those articles where they are saying, oh, Amazon is making so much money and they're not even paying taxes. You have seen those articles. But those are -- it's not illegal, right? They're not doing anything illegal because they're making money, and they're able to get away with stuff like that. But there are over five million marketplace sellers across all Amazon marketplace. Did you know Amazon is a -- it's not just limited to ? That's Amazon uk, a.m. some Canada, Amazon Mexico. And you can see on the right side, you can see all those other countries that we do sell in. So you have uk, Germany, France, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Singapore, and they're growing. This year alone, they launched in Dubai. So it just keeps growing and growing. So exciting things happening. Now we're going to go on to some more data. So Amazon fulfillment shipped billions of items worldwide. In December, between October and December actually, is the busiest time of the year for them. Everyone is getting their last-minute Christmas shopping in, their last-minute holiday shopping. They are getting it in. Think about grandparents that may not be close to their grandkids. They're shipping in and making sure their grandkids are set for the holidays. So billions and billions of shipments go out every month. More than 300,000 third party sellers started selling on Amazon in 2017. So more people are getting hip to this. More people are selling their own products and services. More than 140,000 third party sellers, surpassed $100,000 in sales. Does that sound good? Let me know in the comments section. Does that sound good? Would you want to be making $100,000 in sales by adding your products and services to the platform? This is what people are doing. During the holiday season. Customers order more than one billion items from third party sellers on Amazon with 140 million items ordered between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday. Those dates are coming up, right? We are getting ready for Black Friday. People are looking for sales and deals. People don't want to really run into the store anymore and fight over products. People want to shop from the comfort of their home. And that's one of the benefits of shopping on that platform. Over 184 million visitors a month. If you are selling online, you know how hard it is to even get probably 100 people to your store. Right? You have to get people to your store to be able to shop. And that's very hard. Most of the time we have to pay to get people to shop on our websites and bring traffic to our website. And even if traffic comes to our website, are those converted? But people know, like and trust Amazon. I know I do. If I see a product up there I know it's going to get to me in a certain time. I just love the platform, right? And most people do because it just makes it so much easier to shop. You are able to acquire new customers. If you are selling on the platform, there's millions of people shopping. So they will see your product and they will purchase from you. 66% of the top sellers make $10,000 a month. Amazon has a amazing program that's a lending program so they are able to lend small businesses money when they're short on funds. So if you need money for inventory or whatever it is, they will lend you money. And they have lent over $3 billion. If you have ever been shopping on Amazon, you probably have seen tons of reviews, right? You see all those reviews and sometimes, that's what helps you make your decision when you're buying a product. Amazon has that. When you go to a listing, you're, like, I'm not sure about this product. What's the first thing you do? You go to the comments section. The review section, rather. And you look at those reviews and you're, like, okay, you know, 15 people said it's good. Maybe 10 said it's not good. You look at those reviews and you make your decision. Imagine having that clear concise, you know, predictable, you know, making it better for you to make your purchasing decision, right? So Amazon has all those things already within the platform. We're going to go to the next slide. I see the questions coming in. You guys are bursting with questions! And I can't wait to get to them. They look so juicy! Can't wait to get to them. So let's get down to the nitty-gritty, right? How does selling on Amazon work? Let's see. It's so simple. If you are selling on Amazon, you sendyour product to Amazon, they store it, customer picks it, Amazon picks, packs and ships the product to the customer. You get paid. That's it. That's it. If you you decide, well, I want to do it myself, Tara, you can still do that. You list your product. You sell it. You ship it when the customer orders. And you still get paid. But there's two ways you can do it. I prefer the latter because I don't like getting up and shipping stuff and worrying about something getting late. So this gives me just so much flexibility. And I see the question service-based people saying. How does this work for me? How does this work for me? I promise, I've got you. So now we're going to get down to it. So here are the seven ways. Make sure you have your pen, paper, whatever you're taking notes with, digitally. We are going through it. Are you ready? The first way that you can make money on Amazon is selling your product. Selling your products. So most of what we discuss before with that data, it really, you know, really talking to those people, product-based people. If you are selling a physical product, this is really for you. Most of those data numbers work for you. So you can sell three ways. You can drop-ship or retail offer it. I'm not really a big fan of those because it's not really a long-term way of being on the platform and sustaining the business. But it's worked for a lot of people. A lot of people have done this. They made amazing money and it's worked for them. Sell your products wholesale on Amazon. So this is one of the ways I have used personally. I have a baby company. We sell toys and amazing products for babies. And I have been able to do that. So what I do is I just sell my products on the platform and look at it as if I was selling to a major wholesale or distribution platform or distribution -- and I make money that way. The most popular way is to sell your own stuff. Right? So some people sell wholesale. Some people are, like, well I'll just list it myself and I'll sell it myself. That way is perfectly fine, too. I absolutely love that way because you have more control over what people are receiving, what people are getting. So I absolutely love that way. So here's some fun facts because sometimes you're, like, well, I don't think that can work for me and I'm a visual Lerner and if you are a visua learn 13er, too. I started with one single product. It was the first invention myself and my husband came up with. We started selling that product. It was the first on the market. It was $20. Now, if you are a parent, now $20 products for a teeter may be a bit high for some parent because it's, you know, teeters are normally a dollar, it depends. But our product was innovative and different. And we started selling it on the platform. In six months we made over $100,000 from that one product. And that landed us international distribution because people from other countries that had distribution deals, they started to see our products, they saw the sales, they wanted a piece of it. They started taking our products and selling it in their countries. We're able to also use Amazon platforms to launch in different countries such as uk, Canada, Mexico and other countries. So for a small business like us, that was such an amazing opportunity because we no long her to use a third party distributor or about growing fast or any of those things that you start off worrying about, right? And again, we had no experience when we started. We just took a bet on ourselves and said we're just going to launch our product on the platform and it turned out to be amazing. You know? Couple of years later, we have of course many other skews of products. Amazon has recognized us. They even flew me out this year to Amazon prime day because they saw our sales, they were proud of us and wanted to show their appreciation for us. Being a small business on the platform. So that was pretty fun. So that was number one. If you have a physical product. And I also wanted to show you real quick, you know, some of the bestsellers. If you are, like, well, Tara, what categories sell well? You're talking about your product. But what about mine? Take a quick screen shot of this and I'm sure you guys will also get the downloaded slides. But you can take a screen shot of this. These are some of the categories that do really well. Home and kitchen. Toys. Beauty. If you have a beauty product, amazing. Electronics. Books. A lot of authors are on Amazon. Someone is asking real quick -- good fit for Amazon. They have a custom size where you can customize products for shoppers. So that is available on Amazon for you to be able to do. Grocery, Amazon just bought Whole Foods. So now you have groceries. You can get it in a couple of hours. So these are all the categories that you can shop on which is pretty cool, right? Super cool. I just want to warn you as well. There are some gated categories. What that means is, it doesn't mean like you cannot sell in these categories. It just means that they want to make sure that you're going to provide the customers with an amazing experience and amazing product. So they make sure -- there's quite a bit of a profit to get these products on the platform which makes sense. If you are selling a health and personal care product, we don't want to poison anyone, right, or someone breaking out in rashes with your product. So there's a process to make sure your product is safe. Shoes and handbags, those again, you can have an expensive name brand shoes and handbags, but they want to make sure you're selling authentic products. So watches, you can have an expensive watch or jewelry, so they just want to vet those products. Same thing with toys. You don't want to just put anything out there for a baby. For our product we had to get it tested. It's a baby product. It's going into their mouth. There are rigorous testing for that. If you are good at what you're doing and providing a quality product, this is a no-brainer -- you know, it's going to be easy for you to get through this part. So we are going to number two. The second way you can make money on Amazon is as an influencer which I mentioned a little bit earlier. If you have this amazing tribe of people following you, you have thousands or hundreds of people following you, you can monetize that. And often times, I see people with thousands and thousands of followers, and it could be you're a service provider. Whatever you do. If you are a fitness coach, or if you are just a coach or whatever it is, people are following you. They are following your every word, they are looking at what you're wearing. You're going to a speaking event and they're like, what are you wearing? Where did you get that dress? You dress you have your kids and what is that kid wearing? They want to know what you eat, what you breathe, everything, right? So you need to monetize that. Amazon has provided an amazing way for you to do that. And how that works is you're able to embed a -- they will set you up on a private website and you're able to embed certain things in your blog or website and when people go and read your content or purchase from you, you'll get a percentage and that percentage Commission, rather, goes from 4 to 10%. So there is an absolute way you can monetize being an influential person. I love this one. I'm going to show you a quick way. I don't like to do everything that everyone is doing. I teach my clients to be innovative. And so I'm going teach my clients to be innovative. And so I'm going to show you an innovative way that -- [ No audio ] That is not the normal way that you'll probably see an influence symbol. I was going to a speaking event and had this amazing stylist and she wanted to be able to communicate with me. I'm a parent. I'm always on the go. I don't have time to sit down and figure out what to wear to my next event. Right? And so she was, like, okay, I'm going to shop Right? And so she was, like, okay, I'm going to shop for you on Amazon and I'm going to send you a couple of dresses. You tell me which one you want to wear and if you don't like any, I'll just keep searching. So all of So all of this is within the Amazon platform. Right? So as you can see, these Right? So as you can see, these are the dresses. These are the reviews. Those are the prices. If you look closely, you'll see my note. She is closely, you'll see my note. She is sending me these dresses and I'm -- we're going we're going through this back and forth until we finally find one. We reviewed it together. We were like, okay, this is a hit. And then because I used her link, in which she sent me those dresses, she gets a Commission on top of me paying her as a stylist. Isn't that cool? So there's so much ways you can use this one tip. But I absolutely love that. You are able to monetize your gifts and your talents. She was able to -- if I wore that dress, she can make extra money because -- if I wore that dress, she can make extra money because now she could post on her social media like, hey, check on on my client. This is what she wore. This dress is available is available on Amazon. So if anyone else liked that dress, they can go purchase it. She gets additional Commission after the job is even done. So let me job is even done. So let me know in the comments if you like that tip. The third one is what like that tip. The third one is what probably a lot of you guys have done already, but self-published have done already, but self-published author, publish e book or book on kind am. Publish andon kind am. Publish and eBook or book on Kindle. I'm coming out with out with my third, fourth book or whatever. You don't need a major publisher don't need a major publisher and paying them like, you know, like like a ton of money to get this done. You can do it yourself. So this is fantastic. And I absolutely love, love, love this one. Even so much that my daughter who is 5 years old, she just turned 5, she came to me and, you know, if you have kids they're always telling you these crazy stories and I was lie, okay, girl, you're always making up these stories. Write a book. And so we just moved to the -- we had a huge backyard and she is making up all these stories and I was, like, girl, write a stories and I was, like, girl, write a book. So my 5-year-old wrote their first book this first book this summer adventures in uniwanderland. We got everything done done uploaded to Amazon, boom. They became authors at 5 years old! And they will have residual income for the rest of their years old! And they will have residual income for the rest of their life with a book. So this is a fantastic is a fantastic way that you can still monetize and you can still make you can still make money.. [ No audio ] So work for Amazon from home. You have probably seen some ad or two floating around the internet saying Amazon is hiring. They are a major company. And so they are able to work from home for them. You think about it. They have so much customers. Right? And so they have to -- they are absolutely on top of having good customer service. And that's Amazon's priority. They care nothing more than their customer service. So they need customer service representatives. They need delivery people. And so you are able to do these things starting from anywhere from $18 to $25 an hour. If you are in a small city or major city, find out if they're hiring. You can do Amazon flex which is like -- you can pick up the phone for a couple of hours. So there's so much ways you can benefit from this platform. Just from working at home. Especially for my stay-at-home moms who want to do something extra. So anytime you see those, just look out for them. Make sure it's like a right one and it's not like a fake one that people are just passing around. But these opportunities do come around very often. Then we're going to go to number 5. Trying to keep up. Number 5. So for my service provider, I told you I got you. Right? I told you I got you. So we're going to look at some of the freelancing ways. I'm trying to not like get -- someone said my biggest question for product, why not use drop-ship or send your product to Amazon warehouse? This makes much easier for me because I don't have to worry about shipping. Exactly. You can definitely do that. I did that. That's the way I do it because I don't like to, um, store my product and have to worry about shipping it myself and keeping up. The holiday times are so hectic. I cannot ship a product in a hour, in a day or two days. You know, doing it doing it myself? I need a company like Amazon to be able to do that for me. So that's why I partner with them. So freelance, how did you employ someone to complete illustration for your children's book? Good question. So most of those things we do in-house. But here's where we're going to go into it. So number five. If you are watching your service provider and you do any of these things, you can monetize your gifts and skills and your talents by outsourcing to things that people need that sell on Amazon. So photography. If you're a photographer and you take amazing photos, guess what. You are so needed because people are looking for people like you with your profession to take photos of their products. They need to send in clear pictures to Amazon to sell their products so they could be more competitive. Right? And so they're looking for someone just like you so if you are a photographer, you can absolutely make money. Create a special package. Hey, do you want your pictures taken for your products? I now take product pictures. Whatever it is, people are looking for it. You can definitely monetize as a photographer by creating a special package for people. If you do amazing videos, aIf you do amazing videos, a videographer. You can make money with it. People can see, wow, this is what this product does. It actually works. It actually solved the problem. And so you can make small video content and charge for that as well. Legal service. I love this part because if you are a lawyer, if you provide legal service, people need your services. Right? To sell on Amazon, you get tons of perks if you have a trademark. I always stress to my tribe, my community, to get a trademark. It doesn't matter how small you are of a business. Get a trademark to protect yourself and your business. And so a lot of lawyers are needed because you can provide this service to small business by creating a package say, hey, I do trademarks for Amazon sellers. And I have a special package for you. And I can get it done in x, y, z time. If your product sourcing, you can say well, I know how to source product. I know how to find a product that's going to sell. I'm going to provide this service. If you are a graphic designer, same thing. You can say you know what? I can design amazing graphics. These amazing slides that you're seeing, I have someone in-house that does it but if I need someone to say do some graphic designs for my Amazon page or whatever, then I could say I can outsource that, right? So you can create a package for that and say, okay, I have a special package for Amazon sellers and I'll create these amazing info graphs for you to describe what your product does and all that stuff. Consulting. Someone just asked, you know, what can I do for consulting? I'm a consultant. Right? I'm a Amazon -- I consult people on how to sell on the platform. They come to me and they are not sure how to start. They don't know what to do. And I consult them and I help them to get to the next level. And I'll tell them whether or not it's a good fit for them to sell on the platform them to sell on the platform or not. We won't sell dreams and say things that won't work. It's not for everyone so you have to really find what works for you. That's where someone comes in with expertise to consult. Think about if you are an editor for books and you edit books. You can consult on that. You want You want to sell a book on Amazon, you want to be a author, I can consult you through the entire steps on how to do that. I can make sure your book is good. There's no typos in there. So there's tons of ways you can do that. And again, legal service can connect with consulting because you can consult someone before they launch their products before they, you know, if they are looking at inventing a product. You can consult them on all those things. We do Digitell marketing with customers on Amazon because we help them to market their products on the platform. Again, you're able to edit the books. There's tons of ways. If you don't see what works for you here within a service, I'm going to provide some more. But come on, be creative. Think of and out of the box way that you can do this. Right? I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to give you a few seconds to take a glance at these services. I'm going to go through some of them you tell me if they can work for you because I want to know. I'll go through some of the questions real quickly while you guys are taking a look. guys are taking a look. So someone is asking me about a Amazon show. I am not really big ongoing to a lot of conferences and a lot of these shows. It's very tough. When you are going to any conference or any show or any whatever it is to learn about a specific way to make money and all those things, just use discernment because people sell big dreams. I don't sell a dream. I don't say you're going to make this money because it's not true for everyone. Right? You have to have an amazing product. People are not just going to buy a product because it's on Amazon. It has to be amazing. It has to actually serve a purpose and actually has to work. So just use your discernment and read up about the companies, see more reviews to make sure you know what you're getting into. I have seen people go to conferences and they are a big ticket item and there's no result for it. So just use your discernment like any aspect of business. Just use your discernment. We recommend specific equipment and supplies. What's the best way for to us monetize to way for to us monetize to Amazon? Tell me more about your trade school. What exactly are you teaching? What exact product are you supplying? You may be able to sell to larger companies on the platform. If you sell things normally wholesale to larger entities, then yes, you're able to actually list your product and sell exclusively to other major brands. For example, if I -- one of my products, I have hospitals purchase my products on the platform. And sometimes I don't even realize it's in a hospital. But they have a budget and they have to smell it -- smell it -- they have to spend it with small business and I'm a certified minority business so they have to spend it, um, with certified businesses and sometimes I'm able to get those purchases because I'm on the platform. I'm trying to go through. Okay. So I'm going to come back to the questions. So selling services. So again my service providers, I told you I got you. Right? Home cleaning service. If you provide home cleaning service, Amazon actually has a professional section if you go on your website on the very bottom, and you can apply to provide any of these services that you see here. So you can order fromAmazon for someone to clean your home. My busy mom, you can hire someone to come out and clean your home and that's within your city in Amazon. If you are into window cleaning services, all those services, handy services, plumber, pest control, carpenter, Interior designer, mover, landscaping services, you can apply on Amazon to list your services so someone in the area wants to purchase from you, they can find your services on Amazon. If you ever ordered -- you're like I don't know how to put this thing together, I don't have the time to put it together, there's also always this option on the bottom of that purchase that asks if you want assembly. Right? And so someone will come to your home and they will assemble that furniture or that product for you. And that's what you're paying for. So have you ever thought, who is going to come? How do they get their service up there? This is how they got their service up there. If you are in a small town or whatever, you're going to get that job because not probably a lot of people who are listing your services on Amazon and so Windows purchases come through and people want people to come and actually assemble what it is, they will get that bid. That's a way for any of these professions to be able to get those jobs. Gardener, computer, mechanic, technician. If you purchased a new laptop and it stops working, you can always call them back and say, hey, I need someone to come out and check this out for me. So those are some of the ways that these people get those bids. And the last and final way which is one of my favorite things to do is sell Amazon merch. So this one has changed a bit. When Amazon just launched its platform, they had a ton and ton of inquiries coming in and people were just listing their products up there and then they kind of like limited it. So it's very hard to get, you know, get to this -- to be able to sell your t-shirts and stuff like that now they have added cups and different stuff. But it's still worth it. I'll tell you how this works. You sell custom designed t-shirts. I'm wearing one right now. Then you just upload your designs and there's no up front cost here. So if you are creative like myself and come up with tons of ideas for t-shirts, these are some of our t-shirts that bee actually sell in our community and what it is is like, if I'm doing like a speaking engagement like this or whatever it is, with my community, I come up with like a catchy phrase, my community, like, they're like, hey, can you put that on the shirt? And in less than 24 hours, I can have that tag or that phrase on a t-shirt and they can go buy from Amazon and get it in like a fast turnaround time. The quality is amazing. They don't have to worry about printing it themselves. There's no up front costs or work for you and you just get a percentage. So every month I have money coming into my account just because I'm just selling t-shirts. And it's there. I'm not doing any extra work. This is one way for you to be able to monetize the platform. I actually love this one because I'm always coming up with crazy terms and catchy phrases that I'm able to -- I know people would want to wear because it motivates them and things like that. So this is one of my favorite ones for sure. And the lastly, we are going to come up to the questions. We're right on time. I'm proud of myself, wahoo! So the last one is, not having a trademark is like having a baby with no birth certificate. I'm not a trademark attorney but I'm a businesswoman and I asked -- I love protecting my brand. I love creating that IP for my brands and being able to protect them and having no one being able to use my names and all those things. I see a lot of small businesses, they forget this step. Right? And so this has actually probably nothing to do with Amazon but it's something I always wanted to share with people because it's something that is not taught a lot. If you have a brand that you absolutely love, protect it first because it does have benefits behind it. Right? With Amazon, they've, you know, become very strong on protecting small businesses and brands and knockoffs and all those things and I saw some of those questions earlier. So yes, they are making sure they are protecting you as a business owner on the platform. So if you have a trademark, it opens up so much more doors for you, right? You're able to register your brand. You're able to provide more pictures and videos here. You're able to run concert ads. You're able to create a Amazon storefront. What that means is you can have Bobbiesstore, right? And people can go right there and shop with you. So some people I have seen don't even have a website. They just have Amazon store. And you're able to increase your sales over time because you have that additional protection and blanket, right, for your business. So I just want you to make sure you're creating all these amazing businesses all these amazing products, services, protect them. So that no one can come and say, you know what, you can't use that name because it's not yours. It really isn't yours even if you have been using it for ten years someone else can come and say you can't use that. So just make sure you are protecting your brands. We are going into the fun part, the questions. Just give me some time to just go through all these questions and now is the time that you can start inputting your questions. We have 20 minutes. I'm going to do my best to scroll through the questions. Tara, we'll go in and start the Q & A portion of the call. And we will address as many questions as we possibly can in the time remaining. We have received so many questions today. I know. Great, great questions. So we won't be able to get to everybody's question on this live webinar segment. I do want to mention that if we do not have an opportunity to address your question on the live call, I'd like to encourage you and recommend that you reach out to your score mentor after this session today if you are not already working with a score mentor, you can connect on to request a mentor who can assist you for free with assistance, um, regarding your questions and your business needs. So with that, let's go ahead and we'll jump into these questions. Tara, as you have been presenting, I have been looking at the questions coming in and we are still continuing to eyeball these questions. We have had several folks asking similar questions at the top. Many folks have been submitting questions of their own, the advertising on Amazon. And just asking questions such as, how and where do you advertise on Amazon to promote your products and services? Is it similar to Facebook where it's about ads and clicks? Can you talk a little bit about that and even more specifically how did you promote or advertise on Amazon? Absolutely. Absolutely. That's a fantastic question. For me personally, I have not had a great experience with Facebook ads. And I absolutely love Amazon ads. Why? For the most part, it's very affordable. It's very user-friendly. And you can stop your ads if they're not work. You can up them if they're working. How it works pretty much is Amazon is its own ecosystem. If you think about when you go to search for a product just think about yourself always approach Amazon as a consumer. You go to shop for a product. The first places people are going to is go to Google and they search for a product. The next place consumers go to is they go to Amazon. They're no longer going to Google. They are going to Amazon to put that product in and they search for it. So if your keywords are on point and they're right there in the customer's face, your product may show up depending on how competitive the category you are in. They will come up and people will be able to see that product and they'll click ton right away because that's what they're looking for. So, for example, if I go and I search for a cooking pot and the first pot that comes up I'm going to look at the reviews, I'm going to look at how that product looks, and I may just purchase that first one. So when you have going back to a trademark when you have a trademark, you can run a ad called a sponsored ad or brand registry ad. So those ads are at the very top. If you go to , they are sponsored ads. You will see next to it right next to those ads. But those as ads come up right away you're able to purchase from there. Most people don't scroll all the way down. It's so important today to be running those type of ads. And again, you can start minimal at $5. I have seen customers my clients do $5 ads a day and make $500. It's so reasonable. You're paying per click. So if you have a specific keyword that you know people are searching for, if they say search for that keyword, you only get charged each time they click on your keyword. And so that's pretty much how ads work. I absolutely love the platform for their ads management because if it's not working, you can turn it off. If it's working, you can increase it. So that's one of my actually favorite things about Amazon. Their ads and the fact that people are shopping within the ecosystem. So you don't have to run to ads like 20 different places just to get people to come and purchase your product within the platform. If you are running great ads and they see a product, they're going to purchase it. Then I'm going to go through some of the other questions for you. And if I wasn't clear on that question, just put, you know, a more specific question and I'll make sure I go through that. Let me run through those. When you are third party seller on Amazon, who holds inventory and ships the product, you or Amazon? There are two ways. You have seller fulfilled which means you yourself will fulfill the item for the customer or you have wholesale by Amazon. I prefer -- I do both. But I prefer FBA. It means I ship the product to Amazon. They store it in their hundreds of fulfillment centers around the country and they ship it every time they get a order for that specific product that the customer will order. So the only work you are doing up are doing up front is actually sending in your product and listing your product. After that -- and listing your product. After that -- pretty much does the work for you. You don't have to worry about a order that comes in, that order has been shipped. The other way, you know, other ways sellers fulfill is when you ship the order for the customer. I like both because say, for example, you send in only 50 products to Amazon and you didn't realize it was going to sell out so fast, you still have the seller fulfill as a backup. So in the meantime, when you're sending in product, new inventory, your product is still live and people are still able to purchase from you. So you're not leaving -- what my term is no coins left behind. So you're not leaving any money behind because you have both on. So I prefer both but absolutely, FBA which means Amazon fulfills it for you. I run a small bed and breakfast. Is there a way to sell guest rooms on Amazon? Not yet. Not yet that I know of. But I'm sure that that's probably going to come down the line. I'm sure that's going to come down the line. But maybe what you could do is what do you normally use the most at your bed and breakfast? Look on the platform and see maybe you can sell something that is specific and niche to other bed and breakfasts around the country that they absolutely would love that you can sell because you know there's a need for that. So that's something I would say, um, Dan, to you for that. Is there a way to get around the manufacturers bid on selling on Amazon? Do you mean other manufacturers bidding you from selling your product? It depends. If you are selling, say, like a big brand, say like Nike. I think Nike just removed their products from Amazon. There's not a way around. That trademark protection comes in and it's -- I don't allow other sellers toother sellers to sell my product on Amazon. No one can sell my product on Amazon. So it really depends. And that's why I always make -- I stress like try to sell your own products. That way you don't have to worry about someone banning you from selling their products. I'm a glass artist. Placing my item on Amazon. What exactly is Amazon marketplace. Just what I mentioned. You list your own product and sell it. What's the different in comparison to handmade. You would make a handmade product so it may not be as much -- you're not able to do as much as if someone having a bulk of products because you're making them by hand and it's probably taking you more time. So if that's for your case, I would say Amazon handmade may be a better fit for you. That way you're not promising someone a 24-hour turnaround time when in reality it takes seven weeks or seven days to make that product. So handmade would definitely be better for you, Jenni. How do I use Amazon for my product? I live in Germany and need assistance with shipping. Amazon has Amazon in Germany so you're able to -- shout out to Germany! So Amazon actually has Amazon Germany. I ship my products by Amazon Germany as well so my products are available in Germany. And same process. You ship your products to their fulfillment center. Of course, you create an account, ship your products to their fulfillment center and they are able to get that out to you. If you want to ship here to the US, create an account in the US and you may have to provide some business documents. So you want to look into -- it's a longer process for that. But you can start within your own country to test out the marketplace to see if you like it. How can you make money if you are competing with so many sellers? How do you -- again, any product or service that you're selling, you need to make sure as a seller that your product is competitive. Like I said, it's not a modal that will work for everyone. But then again, people like choices. Right? So we always say, well, there's so many beauty brands, but I don't purchase from every beauty brand. I know which one is specific it my needs. So you have to make sure you're catering to a specific audience and you're solving a problem. Once you're solving a problem, you really don't have to worry about competition. Solve a problem, create a competitive offer that people are going to want because again, there are so many shoppers on the platform. But they are all looking for different things. Right? You may have 50 different sneakers. But if you have 100 customers, you're going to pick which sneakers is for them. So you have to create a compelling offer. So yes, that's why you're able to have so many sellers. And when you think about 5 million sellers is not a lot compared to billions of shoppers. Create a compelling product to them that want. The business ship the product is the shipping free through Amazon? It's once you list your product on Amazon, they are charging you a fee. They are charging you a fee so that's why I said earlier, look at it kind of as a wholesale model. But they are going to charge you a fee. They are giving you access to millions and billions of customers. They want money. They are going to charge you a fee. So the fee in comparison to selling it and shipping it yourself is a little bit lower than having Amazon ship the product for you. The way I look at it is, if I was shipping the product myself with all the orders that we get, I would have to have probably a staff of ten in-house just to do that. So when I outsource it to Amazon, I include all the fees. Having a staff, picking and packing it myself, shipping it, I just include all those costs into their fees. And I look at it strategically like that. A lot of people say their fees are too high or whatever it is. But once the business grows, you're going to need staff and all those things and that's why we're able to grow our business and start other businesses because we're not caught up in having to do all those things. You still can have a staff. We still have a team virtually that are able to do everything for us all over and not -- you're not limited to a certain time schedule but getting the job done. Where do you find items to sell by -- I'm not a big fan of drop-ship honestly. Only balls it's a model that was very popular but now it's changing because people who allow their products to be drop-shipped are now taking away that advantage or that, you know, capability for sellers. And they are saying, well, I want to do it myself and that is to be blamed on retail dying and, you know, these major stores are closing. So people want to take full ownership of what they're selling. And they don't really want a lot of people drop-shipping their products so I said, if you are really looking to sell a product, take the time out to find a problem and solve that problem and find a product that's going to do that because it makes no sense really, you build this amazing store with other people's products and you give them all the recognition they need and then they prevent from you selling it. I've heard Amazon kicks you off the platform if they find out you drop-shipped. If the person, product you're selling decides they no longer want you to sell their product, it's not really Amazon kicking you off. It's that company saying, I don't want no one to sell my products and if you are doing it like illegally and changing your labels and logos and all these other things people are doing, they are going to kick you off. One thing about them which I don't mind because it protects me and my customers, whether you're doing something wrong, illegal, taking advantage of someone else's brand that they built, they are not going to respect that and they are going to take you off the platform because again they want their customers to have an amazing experience. I have used several products that I want to promote as an influencer on Amazon that I purchased from Amazon previously. These are not my products. But I would like to market them on my online store or link to my website. Again, if they are going to do like an influencer program, Amazon has an influencer program that you can sign up to. It will give you a little store like that. So that's -- let me see your name, Darren, that's what it sounds like you want to do where you can direct people to that little store and it will list all those products in there like a little shop and once they click on that product and purchase it, you will get a Commission from that. That's the best way to do it than going through all the work to implement all those products in your own website. You can still do that but that's too much work. Just do it the easier way which they provided an outlet for you to do that and it's not costly to you. Is selling on Amazon platform like Facebook where it's all about ads and clicks? Some products as Amazon has more customers of course it's more competitive, so now a lot of brands have to run ads. You run ads, someone sees your product, they like it they click it they purchase it. That's it. But it's not as much as Facebook where it's solely on ads. Some people make money for the first five years. We didn't run ads because people were finding us and liking the products. So it's very different. I'm trying to answer all these questions. You have five minutes. Um, just wondering how you really got the product to be sold. I'm not sure what you mean. Once you list a product, if you are a customer that shops on Amazon, if you go on Amazon you click, you purchase it, and that's how I'm on the back end of the seller. Sells that product. I'm not sure exactly what you mean. Is there a way that Amazon can show step by step on setting up? There's definitely a way. There's tons of tutorials on the platform and videos on the platform that shows you step by step setup. What regulation is there on food? I have seen expired food national brands sold -- okay. There are rules and restrictions again. Amazon is a third party sellers mostly so when you see like those reports like oh, foods are expired, of course, you have millions of sellers, those things can happen. But there's very, very strict rules when it comes to food. And they do check those stuff and I'm sure with all these reports of expired stuff coming in, it's going to get more rigid and restrictive. Search on Amazon for the rules. How do we always Amazon as a shipping platform while maintaining our own business website? Can you use Amazon Amazon as a shipping platform while maintaining our own business website? Can you use Amazon website platform and/on your business? I do both. And that's always a concern. I don't want to send people to Amazon to purchase my product. What about my website? And this is what I say. We're moving in a very innovative phase of how people are shopping. People don't have time to access my personal website. I probably list my products a little bit lower on my website. And then a little higher on Amazon. So people can come and really shop with me. But people don't care. Parents especially that's my audience they don't care. They're still going to go on Amazon. They will pay the extra because they like the convenience. People like convenience of having their products fast. They don't want to wait for little old you and me to ship our products in four or five days. That's no longer -- people don't have patience no more to wait four or five days for a product to ship. Like for them, they will cancel right away. So when you think about you are basically competing with the world's largest eCommerce platform. And whether we like it or not, we have to make sure we are competitive and when people search for your brand, if they go and find something similar on Amazon, guess where they're going to purchase that product. Not from you. So those are some of the things the statistics we have seen for sure that it's not going to change. It's just going to keep -- people are going to keep wanting to go there. Someone said they have barbies from original boxes. Amazon won't allow them to sell. Yeah. Again, if Mattel doesn't want you to sell it, it doesn't have anything to do with Amazon. Maybe try eBay. If you self publish on Amazon do you have to secure a graphic artist and editor or does Amazon provide that? I have done that in-house for myself. I'm sure they will be coming out with something like that later on. But again, if you are here and you offer graphic service or you're a editor, talk to each other in the comments because again, people are looking for your services. Do you promote your products like book selling on Amazon? If you sell a book on Amazon, you're able to run ads. How do you know a product is real? They don't quality of services. These are outside things you would have to self-promote. How do you become a certified minority vendor? I'm sure you can find that out with score. They have that information. How does Amazon qualify business to be on their platform? score. They have that information. How does Amazon qualify business to be on their platform? There's a process that you have to go through. They will certified your name, business -- your address, all those things are on the back end. name, business -- your address, all those things are on the back end. [ No audio ] They won't necessarily give you the same strategy or the tip that I have given you. What's the best way I have given you. What's the best way to maximize sales of products already on Amazon? Run Afghanistanon Amazon? Run Afghanistan ads and look at the competition. How many items do you -- I think -- okay. How many items do you ship to the shipment center? Everyone is different. I have hundreds of -- I probably ship probably over 100 orders a day so I go based on the sales we are getting so everyone is different. So just look at what works for you. I think I got all the questions in. It was so much fun. Tara, you did a really fantastic job going through so many questions during this Q & A time span. And for the audience we received so many questions and we -- I wish we had more time to spend on those. So if we did not have a chance to get to your question during this live segment, we encourage you to connect with your score mentor after the session today that can help you with your questions and your business needs if you are not already working with a score mentor, go to to find out more information. And request one to work with. As a reminder, we recorded the webinar today. We're going to be sending out a link to the recording as well as the presentation slide deck. Tara's contact information is in the slide deck. So you can reference that, as well. And reach out to Tara for further assistance after the session is over today as well. So we want to thank you all for taking the time out of your day to be here with us. We are going to be taking a break next week from our live webinars for the holiday. We will resume on December 5th with fun is powerful, transform your creative ideas into innovation and profit. So we hope that you can sign up and join us then. Score does have hundreds of on demand courses and webinars that you can access anytime at your convenience by going to , take workshops, so you can view those on demand videos next week since we won't be going live. A special thank you to Tara Darnley for being here with us and presenting. Tara, thank you so much. You're welcome. It was fun. Thanks again, everyone. We hope that you have a great rest of your day. and a very happy holidays ahead. [Eventand a very happy holidays ahead. [Event Concluded] ................
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