It’s the 1st of the month again, which means that it’s time for my monthly blog post!

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If this if your first time here, WELCOME!! I hope you enjoy the today’s content, and encourage you to take a look around this site as there’s much more for you to discover. Here are links to my last few posts:

• Case Study: How to build 1,000 Fans in 5 days (1st September)
• Facebook Ads & Dissecting Audience Data (1st August)
• 7-Step Plan To Reboot Your Business In Record Time (1st July)

Click here to see the full archive

How To Sell More On Amazon

Today’s blog post is about how to sell more on Amazon, and specifically, how to fully leverage product listings.

As I write this blog post, I’m reflecting on what I truly love about running an online business…

In the past few weeks, my wife and I have explored Moscow, seen a rugby world cup match at Wembley stadium in London (between Argentina and New Zealand), done a road-trip through England visiting medieval castles and picturesque villages and attended 2 marketing conferences (the Blueprint Academy conference we run in London, and I was guest speaker at another event in Liverpool).

Here are a few snapshots of the highlights:

Throughout all this, much of my business ran on complete autopilot (or as close as you can get).

Products were sold and shipped.

Thousands of dollars worth of Affiliate sales, Kindle sales, and Adsense income rolled in.

Thousands of new subscribers joined our email lists in all kinds of different niches.

Our customers were looked after by an amazing support team.

And best of all, I was able to enjoy complete freedom without stressing out about what was happening back home, the bills to pay, or anything else.

I’ve spoken about this over and over again… the thing I love about internet marketing businesses are that they can give you all three types of freedom at the SAME time:

• Time Freedom
• Geographic Freedom
• Financial Freedom

I’m yet to find any other business model that can give all three.

If you’re in the process of building an online business but are not quite at the point where you have the freedom you want, don’t give up. Stick with it…

For me, it seems like just yesterday I was broke, tired, leaning over my computer in my rat-race cubicle in an office building in Auckland… if I can succeed running a business online, you certainly can too, you just need to promise yourself you’ll never give up.

Anyway, enough about me, time to get down to business!

Today’s post is about how to sell more physical products on Amazon, and specifically, how to optimize your Amazon listings or overhaul and rebuild stale listings.

If you’re selling a physical product on Amazon (or even a Kindle book), or are interested in getting involved with Amazon, then I think this blog post will be a huge help, I certainly wish I’d had this guide when I started our selling on Amazon!

7-Steps To A Perfect Amazon Listing

We use a 7-step process to optimize Amazon listings:

1. Identify Target Search Terms (Keywords)
2. Analyze Your Competition
3. Back-Up Your Existing Listing (if you have one)
4. Build Your Listing From Scratch
5. Format Your Listing
6. Publish The Changes
7. Monitor Results

For the purpose of this example, we’ll assume that you’ve got an existing Amazon listing that sells camping chairs.

Let’s get started with step #1…

Step #1 – Identify Target Search Terms

Step #1 is all about identifying the search terms that you want to target, your target keywords.

If you don’t know what these are, then you’re just “flying blind”. And if you’re just guessing what these are, then you’re also risking missing out on a lot of sales.

We use three methods to identify our target keywords:

1. Ad Data from Amazon Paid Ads
2. Merchant Words
3. Amazon Search Box Suggestions

Ad Data from Amazon Paid Ads

If you’re working on a brand new listing, then you won’t be able to use #1 just yet, but I do recommend you come back to re-evaluate your keywords once your listing is live.

If you do have an Amazon listing already, then the best thing you can do is run paid ads for your product for 10 days to build up some valuable search and sales data. This is worth doing EVEN if your ads run at a loss, the data will pay itself off many times over!!

Running ‘automatic’ ad campaigns in Amazon is EASY. You simply login to Amazon Seller Central, and set up ads in the Promotions tab.

After your ads have been running for a while, you can download ad reports that show data for specific keywords – this data is GOLDEN.

When you open the ad report in Excel, it’ll look something like this:

NOTE: The image above is just an example, the numbers aren’t real, I’ve just made them all up.

The report shows the number of Impressions (searches, column G above) for specific keywords, as well as the number of sales each keyword generates (column M above).

You can then use this data to make an educated guess as to which are your most important keywords. Obviously the objective is to target keywords that result in sales. This doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to target the highest volume keywords though, you need to look at search volume, but ALSO sales (if you haven’t made sales in your ad campaign period, then all you can base your decision on is relevance and search volume which is still better than nothing).

For Amazon listing optimization, I recommend making a list of your top 7 – 10 keywords that you want to rank for. Make your list, then move on to Merchant Words.

Top Keywords from Ad Report (example)

1. Camping chair
2. Portable camping chair
3. Foldable camp chair
4. Folding camp chairs
5. Lightweight camp chair
6. Camp chair
7. Chair for camping

Merchant Words

Merchant Words is a tool that gives search volume estimates for Amazon keywords. The data isn’t perfect, but it gives you a measuring stick, a way to compare two different keywords. You can safely assume that a keyword with 3000 monthly searches will have more searches than a keyword with a search volume of 1500.

Make an account with Merchant Words (it costs $30/month, you can signup for one month and then cancel if you want to, or you can use THIS SECRET LINK to get it for $9/month), do a search for your main search term (and similar variations), and note down the most relevant keywords that have the highest search volume.

Just like with the paid ad data, the goal here is to make another list of 7 – 10 keywords that you think will result in sales.

Top Keywords from Merchant Words (example)

1. Camping chair
2. Camp chair
3. Fabric camping stool
4. Folding camp chair
5. Folding camping chairs
6. Folding camp chairs
7. Outdoor camping chairs
8. Lightweight camping chairs

Once you’ve done that, move on to the Amazon Search Box Suggestion tool.

Amazon Search Box Suggestions

The final thing we do is look at what Amazon suggests for different keywords when we start typing in related keywords.

For example:

As you can see, when I type in ‘camping ch’, Amazon suggests a range of keywords. These suggestions are based on what other people have been searching for, so if something appears prominently here, we can assume it gets some search volume.

Make another list of 7 – 10 keywords that you think would likely result in sales.

Top Keywords from Amazon Suggestion Tool (example)

1. Camping chair
2. Camp chair
3. Chair for camping
4. Folding camp chair
5. Camping chair with carry case
6. Outdoor camping chair
7. Oversize camping chair

Now that you’ve done some research, you’re well placed to start building your new listing. Before you do though, take a moment to check what your competition are doing, we do that in Step #2.

Step #2 – Analyze Your Competition

If your competition are made up of savvy marketers, then chances are they’ve already done a lot of the hard work for you. An easy way to get more ideas for your listing is to analyze what some of your top competitors have done.

The best things to look at are:

• The titles
• The bullet points
• The descriptions

Carefully read through what your competitors have written in these spaces, and copy down the best parts of the listings. Here’s an example of a few of the best titles I found for camping chair products:

• Quik Chair Heavy Duty 1/4 Ton Capacity Folding Chair with Carrying Bag (Grey)
• ALPS Mountaineering Folding Camp Chair with Pro-Tec Powder Coating Finish
• G4Free Portable ultralight outdoor/picnic/fishing folding sports chairs ground chair

Once you’ve made a list of some of the most appealing titles, bullets, and parts of descriptions, move on to Step #3. If you don’t have an existing listing, then you can skip Step #3, and jump directly to Step #4.

Step #3 – Back-Up Your Existing Listing

As mentioned above, this step is only relevant to people who have existing listings.

This idea here is to get a complete copy of what you previously have for your listing so that you can revert back to it later if you want to.

Start by copying out your ‘Search Terms’ from your listing. These are found inside Amazon Seller Central in the product editing page. The keyword section looks like this:

For the sake of example, my ‘existing search terms’ may have been the following:

• Camping chair
• Folding chair
• Camp stool
• Folding chair
• Outdoor chair

Do the same for your existing title, bullets, and description. I’ve included an example of each below so that you can see a hypothetic “before and after” scenario.

Current Title

Quik Chair Folding Quad Chair with Carrying Bag

Current Bullets

• Opens and closes in seconds, Very easy to use and store
• Carry bag with shoulder strap included
• Sturdy steel frame construction, Includes cup holder
• Durable polyester fabric
• 225 lb. load capacity, Under 36″ tall when folded

Current Description

Our Bravo Sports Quik Chair Bronze Series Chair features sturdy steel construction, durable polyester fabric and a cup holder. This chair opens and folds closed in seconds! Includes carry bag with shoulder strap. Only 36″ tall when folded closed. 225 lb. load capacity. Perfect for the backyard, park or sporting events.

Step #4 – Build Your Listing From Scratch

Once you’ve backed everything up, it’s time to start from scratch on re-building your listing (or if you don’t currently have one, building it from scratch).

Everything you did in Step #1 and #2 were to make Step #4 easier. To begin with, I recommend you list out all your target keywords from each of the three keyword identification methods (if you don’t have all three, just use what you do have):

Top Keywords from Ad Report (example)

1. Camping chair
2. Portable camping chair
3. Foldable camp chair
4. Folding camp chairs
5. Lightweight camp chair

Top Keywords from Merchant Words (example)

1. Camping chair
2. Camp chair
3. Fabric camping stool
4. Folding camp chair
5. Folding camping chairs
6. Folding camp chairs
7. Outdoor camping chairs
8. Lightweight camping chairs

Top Keywords from Amazon Suggestion Tool (example)

1. Camping chair
2. Camp chair
3. Chair for camping
4. Folding camp chair
5. Camping chair with carry case
6. Outdoor camping chair
7. Oversize camping chair

The place to start when building your listing is to identify what you want to set your “Search Terms” as (inside Seller Central).

Although Amazon doesn’t explicitly tell us the best way to get the most leverage from the Search Term field, it does allude to how we should be using it on their ‘Search and Browse help’ page.

Industry leaders tend to agree that the full space you have available (50 characters) should be used when selecting keywords. Studies done by Moz.com tend to back this belief up.

Based on this, here are the guidelines we recommend you follow:

• You should use as many of the 50 characters that you have available in each of the 5 fields
• You do not need to repeat any words
• Commas will be ignored, so don’t bother using them
• Quotation marks will unnecessarily limit your keyword
• Including multiple variations of the same word is unnecessary
• Including common misspellings is unnecessary
• Order of the search terms may matter

Here’s an example of what may be used for the search terms for a camping chair, based on the Target Keywords above.

• camping chair portable foldable lightweight sport
• camp chairs folding light weight outdoors sports
• outdoor stool picnic strength strong green ground
• fold heavy duty capacity carry bag fishing coleman
• campmate outdoors travel black grey red blue

Put the most important keywords first. If you run out of options, start using colors, sizes, etc.

NOTE: See how different these keywords are to what we originally had in the example? These are now MUCH more optimized and give the best chance possible to rank for a range of keywords.

Next work on your product Title.

The Title is absolutely key, and the single biggest factor that impacts your ranking.

NOTE: Amazon states that the title should be a maximum of 80 characters in length.

Here’s my new title:

CampMate Camping Chair – Portable, Lightweight, Folding Camp Chairs (Red, Green)

As you can see above, I’ve strategically included a range of my target keywords including:

• My brand name (CampMate)
• Camping Chair
• Portable
• Lightweight
• Folding
• Camp Chairs (plural)
• Colors

The next thing to work on are the bullet points. As far as the text on the listing goes (once people actually click through to your listing), the bullets are the most important.

People will scan your bullets looking for key features and benefits. If they see them, they’ll stay on your page and consider buying, if they don’t, then they’ll leave.

Here’s an example of my ‘new bullets’:

• DURABLE & STRONG: The CampMate camping chair is built with a strong steel frame & has a capacity of 400lb (181kg).
• ULTRA-LIGHTWEIGHT: This portable camp chair weighs just 5lb (2.3kg) making it lighter than most folding camp seats.
• FUNCTIONAL & COMPACT: This outdoor camping seat folds away for easy storage. Enjoy extra functionality with a cup holder, mesh zip pocket & padded arm rests.
• CARRY BAG: Easily transport this camping chair using the stylish canvas carry case (included free of charge)
• 1-YEAR GUARANTEE: Backed up by a 100% money back guarantee for 1 year. If you have any problems, we’ll replace your chair or give you your money back.

See how I capitalized the first word (or two) of each bullet?

Not everyone does this, but it helps the key points stand out, and it’s not penalized by Amazon, so I recommend you do it. Amazon allows multiple lines of text for each bullet, so I strongly recommend you use as much of the space you have available. I normally like to keep my bullet points to 2-3 lines, and strategically incorporate as many of my keywords as I can.

Once you’ve done that, it’s time to move on the the description.

Amazon currently allows up to 2,000 characters to be used in descriptions. It is possible to using bolding, bullet points (using a dash, “-”) and break descriptions into easy-to-read paragraphs as shown below. For best results we recommend you use as much of the 2,000 characters as possible. Remember to write for HUMAN readers (not robots), but also work in as many of your keywords as you can.

Here’s my example description:

+++++++ +++++++ +++++++

Foldable, Lightweight & Extra Strong

The CampMate camping chair is the ultimate portable camp chair on the market. This folding outdoor seat is ultra-lightweight (less than 5lb / 2.3kg), built with a super-strong steel frame, and packs down into a compact carry case.

Camping Stool Features

– Strong & Durable: 400lb seating capacity (181kg)
– Lightweight: Weigh less than 5lb (2.3kg)
– Innovative Design: Cup holder, zip pocket & padded arm rest
– Carry Bag: Canvas bag for easy storage & transportation
– Red or Green: Choose from two color options

This foldable camping seat is also the ideal accessory for fishing, picnics, sports, concerts & other outdoor events.

Built With The Best Materials

Camping chairs need to be able to withstand testing conditions, rough treatment, and serious loading. The folding camp chair from CampMate is made with the best materials available, it’s durable, and it’s designed to last. Unlike inferior quality options, we don’t cut corners on using the best materials available.

1-Year Guarantee

The CampMate lightweight camping chair is backed up by a 1-year guarantee.

We take pride in premium products & great customer service. All camp chairs are sent using Amazon FBA fast shipping in order to deliver the chair to you as fast as possible.

Get the CampMate camping chair delivered to your door by clicking on the “Add to Cart” button now.

+++++++ +++++++ +++++++

Compare this listing to the original example in Step 3… which do you think would convert better?!

Once you’re happy with your description, it’s time to format it, that’s what we do next.

Step #5 – Format Your Listing

Although not specifically stated by Amazon, it is possible to using bolding, line breaks, and bullets in your description. Here’s how we do it:

• For bolding, surround bolded words using <b>text here</b>
• To create a line break, add </br> to the end of a line
• To simulate a bullet point, use the dash symbol, “-“

Adding this code into your description WILL count as part of your 2,000 character limit, so use it carefully.

Here’s how the above description would look once it’s been formatted:

+++++++ +++++++ +++++++

<b>Foldable, Lightweight & Extra Strong</b></br>
</br>
The CampMate camping chair is the ultimate portable camp chair on the market. This folding outdoor seat is ultra-lightweight (less than 5lb / 2.3kg), built with a super-strong steel frame, and packs down into a compact carry case.</br>
</br>
<b>Camping Stool Features</b></br>
</br>
– Strong & Durable: 400lb seating capacity (181kg)</br>
– Lightweight: Weigh less than 5lb (2.3kg)</br>
– Innovative Design: Cup holder, zip pocket & padded arm rest</br>
– Carry Bag: Canvas bag for easy storage & transportation</br>
– Red or Green: Choose from two color options</br>
</br>
This foldable camping seat is also the ideal accessory for fishing, picnics, sports, concerts & other outdoor events.</br>
</br>
<b>Built With The Best Materials</b></br>
</br>
Camping chairs need to be able to withstand testing conditions, rough treatment, and serious loading. The folding camp chair from CampMate is made with the best materials available, it’s durable, and it’s designed to last. Unlike inferior quality options, we don’t cut corners on using the best materials available.</br>
</br>
<b>1-Year Guarantee</b></br>
</br>
The CampMate lightweight camping chair is backed up by a 1-year guarantee.</br>
</br>
We take pride in premium products & great customer service. All camp chairs are sent using Amazon FBA fast shipping in order to deliver the chair to you as fast as possible.</br>
</br>
Get the CampMate camping chair delivered to your door by clicking on the “Add to Cart” button now.</br>

+++++++ +++++++ +++++++

Once you’ve prepared your formatted listing, it’s time to Publish it.

Step #6 – Publish Your Changes

As soon as you’ve completed your listing, publish the changes (you do this inside Seller Central)!

Remember, if you’ve followed the steps above, then you’ll have a copy of your old listing and will be able to revert back if you need to. Nothing is set in stone.

Step #7 – Monitor Results

The whole purpose of changing your listing is so that you can get better rankings for the RIGHT target keywords, and to help convert more visitors into buyers by using more persuasive copywriting.

The only way you can know for sure whether what you’ve done has improved an existing listing is by watching your results roll in.

If you don’t have an existing listing, then I strongly recommend that you start monitoring and tracking data as soon as you can, and then you can test out new listings in the future once you have some benchmark data to compare to.

Amazon reporting makes it easy to monitor your traffic and conversions. In addition to this, we recommend you track the rankings of your 2-3 most important target keywords (for rankings in Amazon, I recommend you only aggressively target 1-3 keywords, we’ll talk about how to do this in a future blog post).

After you’ve made changes to your listing, allow a week to start seeing the impact of those changes. If you don’t see more sales (or a better conversion rate immediately), don’t panic, make sure you’ve had enough visitors before you make any conclusions (you’ll likely need hundreds if not thousands of visitors before your data has any statistical significance).

So to recap the 7-step improvement process, here’s what we recommend you do:

1. Identify Target Search Terms (Keywords)
2. Analyze Your Competition
3. Back-Up Your Existing Listing (if you have one)
4. Build Your Listing From Scratch
5. Format Your Listing
6. Publish The Changes
7. Monitor Results

It’s easy, and it gets results.

Before you leave today, click the button below to access my UPDATED Passive Income Profit Plan:

NOTE: It sometimes takes 15 minutes or so for the cheatsheet to be delivered to your email. If you don’t see it immediately, just give it some more time.

What Do You Think?

I’d LOVE to hear your feedback about this blog post!

Leave a comment below, and if you’ve got any questions, let me know. All comments get published, and I read them all!

Thanks for reading,

Until next time!

Aidan

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