Selling 7 Figures off of Amazon with Chad Rubin

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Chad Rubin joins to talk off of Amazon.

Built Software to run his business

About 50% of business off of Amazon on an eight figure business
Started on Magento and then moved to eBay – was a first generation Amazon seller
Other marketplaces are like the wild west now
Chad’s product is very commodity – not a sexy product
Could be doing much more business of Amazon if a sexier product

Find opportunity that Amazon doesn’t play in
Think about Casper mattress, Warby-Parker, Away Luggage, Allbirds shoes
All of these disrupt and go super-niche, provide an experience and take customers on a journey outside of amazon
What are categories that are ripe for disruption and can sell off of Amazon
Vape juice can’t be sold on Amazon and a massive opportunity off of Amazon

Most stuff now is just common sense
Curating your listings
Making them built to sell
Focussing on their conversion rate
Optimising 50% for Amazon search and 50% so that the customer actually buys that product on your page
PPC sensitivity analysis that no-one else is doing
Look at what you’re spending to what your making and the correlation
No proof that the more you spend the better your rank
Tested by spending as much as possible to dominate in his niche
Hired a banker to understand the correlation between spend to make – showed a very low R co-efficient between spend to make
A connection between what you spend and what you make – get R co-efficient to as close to 1 as possible

Started to dramatically lower ACoS – really dramatically reduced spend here
Not in business to spend money just to get a higher BSR
Everyone’s job in my business is to spend money to increase the bottom line
A paradigm shift in the company
Increasing page rank just benefited Amazon
If all things remain constant but adjusting the ACoS what gives the most amount of money with the products that we have with the spend that we have
Made the mistake of focussing on increasing rank rather than making profit
Have a Tier 1 SKU, Tier 2 SKU and Tier 3 SKU – then calculated the proper ACoS for the SKU Tiers, not all SKUs are the same ACoS

Don’t do a lot of social Media as in a commodity space
On every channel off Amazon – about 18-20 channels (Jet, Walmart, eBay, Groupon, Overstock, Home Depot…)
Like playing Monopoly – you need to be on every square on the Board to win – same with off of Amazon selling
This means you show up in all Google spaces via Jet, Walmart, etc. via their Google PLAs

Own website lots of PLAs and SEO work
Lot of content and backlinks
Links and Rich content are key
Vacuum parts hard for SEO and engaging content
Software SEO v’s Local SEO v’s eCommerce SEO for vacuums – very different approaches
eCommerce – Chad’s niche is super hard – nobody cares about it
Small DIY blogs and really compelling content – aim is to get a backlink
Use guest posts, give discounts to their community for the products

Had one person – 30 people in the eCommerce Business – and was a small town to find skills in
Going remote opened up skills to tackle the business weaknesses
Finding people and using Basecamp made a huge difference
Remote culture is built through Basecamp
Skubana side – everyone is in New York and 28 people

Very efficient in time management
Chad’s wife is an entrepreneur and runs a Yoga firm
Work is integrated into their lives – holiday, etc it’s just part of life
Monday is listening day – standup meetings
Structure the day with Sun and Moon
Morning is best for energy and email is not a good use of energy in the morning
Have Lunch and coffee
Late afternoon when things die down can go to email and clear it (VAs draft emails through the day in his Inbox ready for review)
Wall Street taught how to work very long hours without moving 7am to 2am for 3 years
Having Analytics to analyse business and run a P&L

Why would you go off of Amazon – only the strongest survive on Amazon
A Gateway drug – easy to get started and super hard to ever leave
Would you invest in a stock with one customer – too much risk, need to diversify your risk level
Chad has been suspended on Amazon five times – and it hurt
After tasting the bottom of the barrel, Chad diversified through marketplaces and shopping carts
How do you manage it – you need a system in place to run and automate your business
The system you pick determines how much success you can get in your business
Skubana is multi-channel and covers off of Amazon
McDonalds in UK versus New Jersey will be systemised nad consistent across the World
Automate the channels as you expand with 1 click integrations
Do research on where your customers that buy are spending their time
Chad’s customers spend their time on Walmart, eBay, Google, Amazon and Home Depot
Smart luggage would target travellers on Facebook and Instagram or Twitter luggage complainers – catch eyeballs and wallet share of those
How do you win if you’re doing the same as everyone else – there’s no competitive advantage

Surround yourself in this circle of Amazon – Understand that there is so much life outside of Amazon
Loads of Huge brands outside of Amazon selling thousands and thousands of products
If you ‘re going to sell off of Amazon, be prepared and have the budget to build that traffic
Off of Amazon conversion rates are 1% not 15% – it takes time to build the traffic to get that 1 in 100 off of Amazon
Focus on an innovative product that solves a problem – the only way to go
Hit the ground running and make mistakes – learn from the school of life
You’re not growing unless you’re failing – you learn from people’s failures as well as your own