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

Richard Morgan
September 10, 2017

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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