Free Plus Shipping Method Tips and Tricks with Paul Harvey – Session 013


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Paul is an Amazon Seller and in this episode Paul tells us all about the Free Plus Shipping method as an approach to selling using Facebook ads.

This is a different approach to selling on Amazon and opens up your selling skills through the use of sales funnels off Amazon, product selection optimization using Ali Express, shorter shipping times and Facebook pixel grooming.

Free plus shipping is drop-shipping where you buy from China for $1 and sell on Facebook as FREE PLUS SHIPPING where the shipping is inflated to cover your unit costs.

You would likely look to use this technique as an addition to your Amazon strategy.

Where to get products for the Free plus Shipping Method?

  • Start on Ali Express
  • Use Jewellery as example
  • Silver oil diffuser for $2 which includes free shipping to US or UK
  • Find on-line stock images
  • Create a Facebook ad with the images
  • This ad takes them from Facebook to your funnel saying ‘Get this free product here just pay shipping’

The Free plus Shipping Method Steps

  • Being an Amazon Seller will hold us back here if we follow the Amazon rules
  • We are selling via Facebook here
  • FAD FEED is a site and Chrome Extensions that only shows all the sponsored ads in your FB feed
  • Go to the niche you want – Using this feed you can see what the advertisers are advertising – because they often use ‘dark posts’ that you can’t see what they are advertising
  • Create the free plus shipping ads on Facebook
  • Once it runs it sends people to your funnel
  • Use whatever free plus shipping funnel tool you want but it MUST have a payment gateway
  • Say your product cost $2 including shipping from Ali-Express
  • You sell it for $3 free plus shipping – You get back the $2 product cost plus the $1 Facebook ads cost
  • So you break even
  • Now through the funnel itself there are ‘upsells’ both in quantity and different variations
  • So once they leave the funnel and have gone through the upsells – they have spent $12+
  • This means your profit margin can go upto 200% profit from break even
  • You will have spent $1 on the ad and about $4 on the products and upsells giving you $12-$15 when they leave

Product Research for the Free Plus Shipping Method

  • Typical product that the free plus shipping method has worked well with is the fidget spinner fad
  • Do your research on Facebook – look for FREE PLUS SHIPPING
  • Become a social media floozy and search through Facebook for free plus shipping pages and ‘like’ as many pages as possible
  • Setup a secondary Facebook profile for this so as not to ruin your own Facebook feed
  • Paul runs upto 5 or 6 profiles with each one being focussed on a niche he is targeting (kids toys, dog products, etc)
  • Log in and see what’s trending and follow the ads
  • Most of them go to a Shopify store and not to a funnel which is great because you can change their URL on the store to look at their best-sellers
  • You then know what they are really selling and which are their most profitable products
  • Then take that research and go and find these products on Ali Express

Supply chain

  • Shipping times – Best 10 days and worst is 40 days
  • Need a good trust factor with the supplier as you won’t see the product so need good quality out of the gate
  • Once you’ve made 20-30 orders on Ali Express you take the purchases off Ali Express with the manufacturer to improve the profit margin for them and you

Setting up Ads for Free plus Shipping

  • When you start off with these you will fail as you are ‘testing’ and spending on the tests
  • Have a separate ad account for every separate niche
  • Need to groom that pixel
  • First need to run the ads
  • Look at all the people who have ‘liked’ these brands or similar products on FB
  • Market back to them
  • Paul look at their interests and has 10 factors of interests he looks at
  • The is no fixed formula it is just testing, testing and testing with audiences to see what works for the niche
  • Once Paul has the audience honed the next step is to create the ad
  • The Ad must ‘break their concentration’ so appealing to take them off of Facebook

The Free Plus Shipping Method Ad strategy

  • Go to YouTube and find videos to make a video slideshow
  • The Ad is not the be-all and end-all of the product
  • It’s the ‘product’ people want that pulls people and not the ad
  • Paul has had two products with equal rubbish ads but the product people wanted more sold a lot more – so the product selection is what will win in this method
  • It is down to the product – so the secret is to test so many products and finding a winner
  • Once you find a product that sells then you improve your funnel and then improve your Facebook ad to increase sales
  • So you are optimising for the ‘right product’ – Fidget spinners are ‘trendy’ and so if you can sell a few of those you know you are in the right ballpark to optimise

How to groom your pixel

  • Run a Facebook ad with objective for engagements (include link in the copy for engagements) or link clicks
  • If you make sales from that then you know you’re onto a winner
  • Increase the ad spend there until you have 100 pixel fires (include the Facebook pixel on all your funnels and websites, this acts as a cookie and enables you track if they have landed on your funnel or website)
  • Then change the ad to a ‘conversion’ objective
  • The first page is the opt-in, the second page is where you makes sales, the third page is the thank-you page
  • So everyone who gets to the thank you page has already purchased
  • Once I have 100 people who have made a purchase and reached the thank you page
  • I then tell Facebook to target all those people who have purchased and create a ‘lookalike’ audience on those people
  • This reduces your ad cost a lot as it’s more targeted
  • Very important to get your product research right
  • The spend on ads is the big element here as opposed to large stock costs
  • Do a slideshow ad or video ad as it’s cheaper than the carousel ads
  • It doesn’t work as well for organic traffic
  • Used a woman in the video when marketing to women – better alignment
  • Headline is : “We have 100 of these units free to celebrate our birthday”
  • Drives scarcity
  • Tweak the copy until you get it right
  • Buy it now, only 100 left – then add comments that say only 60 left, etc
  • The landing page then imitates the ‘only 50 left’ etc to drive scarcity
  • Congruency of the landing page to the add – colours, video, look and feel etc.

Landing Page format

  • Paul was doing jewellery so emulated the big jewellery brand pages with lots of white background and pretty colours. Very professional
  • Paul created two funnels – one for US and another for UK with the UK emphasising the fact that it’s just paid shipping (the US are more used to paying shipping, UK are not)
  • On the left side of the page is the image like Amazon product page
  • To the right – title, product, and a PAIN point ‘this jewellery will match any clothing…’ etc
  • Headline > Pain Point > Price (Free plus Shipping)
  • Then a button for them to opt-in
  • Successful funnel will convert at 20% opt-ins
  • 30% opt-in for the page
  • 8-15% of those that opted-in will buy

 

  • Facebook > Opt-in Funnel > Submit email > Order Payment page > Upsell to buy 2 for $5
  • If Paul sells a single unit there’s no profit just breakeven
  • Paul only makes a profit when they order more than a single unit
  • About 70% of the sales are buying high quantities
  • The psychological jump between $3 to £$5 is minor for the buyer decision making so they buy higher quantities
  • Ali-Express shipping and bundling costs are rewarded with cheaper unit cost
  • MAKE SURE your supplier is shipping for free

Software to use

  • Shopify is the main tool as it’s easy – but it limits you and not as secretive
  • This is a very competitive business
  • Click Funnels is very good and Paul is a big fan – but can be expensive on a smaller budget and starting out (can take 2-3 months to learn the software – could be 900 dollars)
  • Paul is using BuilderAll – exactly the same as ClickFunnels and is only $30/month
  • BuilderAll are implementing one-time use coupon codes in sales funnels
  • You could do this as an add-on for your amazon business for your promo-codes etc.
  • Paul will give you his BuilderAll funnels as templates up front to get you started

Free Plus Shipping Method Costs

  • Finding the product
  • Ad Spend on Facebook
  • Opt-in rate
  • Conversion Rate
  • Software costs

Optimise for Profit

  • Burn money in the beginning on Facebook Ads (testing)
  • Converse to Amazon you would spend 2,000 to 3,000 dollars on stock
  • Paul did 40 products and 40 funnels to test and found 2-3 winning products – this cost about £300 to £500 that month to just test
  • The following month he had the winning products and just increased his ad spend to increase sales
  • YOU MUST keep an eye on your ad spend every day – the biggest thing you can’t monitor is your Facebook ads – it could cost you a lot
  • Shipping costs from Ali-Express and the software costs are your biggest costs
  • If you use Stripe for payments they charge 1-2% per transaction

Summary

  • Product research – get a large beer or wine and sit and play around on Facebook to research your product niches
  • Next head to Ali-Express – go for light-weight items and cheap items as easier on your budget, lighter to post and manage
  • Target price below $4 including shipping
  • Setup Facebook Ads
  • Groom the pixel to get your target audience
  • Setup landing page – avoiding Shopify (as setup is big and complex)
  • Look at BuilderAll for your landing page and for funnels
  • Get congruency with Facebook Ads – use slideshow or video from YouTube
  • Don’t spend too long on the product campaign – optimise for the product itself
  • Do 5-6 funnels and products at a time to see where the winners are

 

Contact Paul at:

  • Epsilon Ecommerce
  • Facebook group – BuilderAll for Amazon Sellers

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