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Why Most Amazon Sellers Fail.. Interview with Kevin Pak
128 Plays2 months ago
Why do 99% of Amazon launches fail? People choose the wrong product, mess up their launch strategy, or do both. With 3,700 new sellers joining every day, getting your launch right is crucial. In this episode, I sit down with Kevin Pak—a former college dropout turned $500K/month Amazon seller and Founder of FBA Boss Academy.
At the end of the video, you’ll know how to:
✅ Identify top-sellers and market gaps to create your perfect product.
✅ Spot trending product opportunities before they reach Amazon.
✅ Use Vine to get reviews and build immediate credibility.
✅ Make your product a clear choice over competitors.
If you’re considering launching a product on Amazon, don’t miss this one..
Do you need help scaling your Amazon brand? Get a FREE account audit by my team to see how we can help: https://hubs.la/Q02PxrkY0
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Transcript
Introduction to Common Amazon Launch Failures
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome back to the Amazon blueprint podcast.
Importance of Strategy in 2024
00:00:05
Speaker
99% of Amazon launches fail because people fail to choose the correct product or they have a terrible launch strategy. It's getting more and more competitive in 2024 and you need a rock solid strategy.
Introduction of Expert Guest
00:00:16
Speaker
And I'm joined by an expert who has not only launched his own brand and products successfully, but has done so for dozens of students and has helped them find great products to launch and help them launch successfully. Kevin, what's up, man?
Expert's Success and Strategies
00:00:28
Speaker
What's up, man? Thanks for having me. Dude, I'm really excited to have you because I've watched your journey. You are someone who's walked the walk, right? You've launched your own products. I've seen your sales. you you know You've showed your sales. You showed your brand. You're launching a new brand that is incredible. We just got a whole care package of it. I'm excited to taste it. Not only that, but your success also shows on your Instagram. You you know showcase the lifestyle. You live a good life. You have a good relationship. So I'm very interested to learn how you've
Product Selection Techniques
00:00:52
Speaker
reached that success. I want you to walk me through how you choose products, how you launch them, you know all that good stuff. Absolutely, man. I appreciate you having me on here as well. So ah yeah, whatever game I can give out. I'm open book, man. Let's do it, man. So so walk me through how do you select products? Like how do you choose a product that you want to launch? So I like to use first off a certain research method that gives me a lot of options. So one of my favorite ways to search products right now is just literally going on the Amazon website and just typing in like a very generic keyword. So it would be like home decor or bath accessories, something very broad because when you do that, it allows me to see a bunch of different products. It's not like the same product over and over.
00:01:31
Speaker
So that allows me to kind of just see what's out there, what's popping off and what's doing really well. I also use tools like Jungle Scout Orchillium 10 that will bring out the numbers and show kind of like, you know, how much does this product make if it's like a bath towel or maybe it's a shower caddy or something of that nature. um So it kind of allows me to kind of see everything very quickly. And then when I see something that's very interesting, I'll pick up that specific product and look at the market as a whole. And that's kind of one of my favorite ah recent ways of finding new products right now.
Evaluating Market Opportunities
00:02:01
Speaker
So you're essentially looking for, you know, opportunities. Are you looking for products that are doing good revenue or are you looking for products that are doing a low revenue? Like what what are some kind of your like criteria? So I would say what I like to go for is a certain minimum threshold. So for example, like if a product market is doing maybe like a total of $200,000 per month,
00:02:21
Speaker
then that's a good sign already that's showing me that a lot of people are trying to buy the product but not just the total revenue though but i like to look at the individual sellers so when you pull up like the chrome extension like helium 10 or jungle scout it'll show all of the data of all of these listings on that page and what their total revenue is how many reviews they have their sales history etc and so i'll look at like the top 10 to 20 sellers and see like are they doing really well because that kind of paints a better picture than just the total revenue itself, because you could see the total revenue, you know, be 200 $300,000 a month, but then it's being taken up by one seller, you know, like there might be doing like 170 K, right? And that's not really good for me. I don't want to see somebody dominating. I want to see it evenly spread out, you know, some people doing 10 K, 20 K, 30 K, et cetera, you know, yeah Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And it's funny that you mentioned this because I feel like a lot of people are trying to look for small, low competition niches, but it seems like you're looking for higher competition niches. And that's what I do, too. you know I always go into supplements because I know if the market is big and if there's people making you know hundreds of thousands of dollars a month,
00:03:29
Speaker
I can come in with a better product and I can at least steal some market
Differentiation through Branding and Optimization
00:03:32
Speaker
share from them. So my next question is, how are you looking at those products to try and differentiate? So are you looking for like opportunities where you're like, you know this is like a bath towel or something, but it's like under optimized. I think I can make a better version. Is that what you're looking at? Oh yeah. So going back to your point about competition, we are open to not only going for like more, uh, competitive markets. So like maybe the average reviews might be a little bit higher, 500, 600, but we're not you know opposed to the average market is a hundred, like fantastic. It's an open book for us, right? But we are open to going into those higher, uh, competitive markets.
00:04:05
Speaker
And what we're really looking for is whether there is kind of like a a hole in the market is what I call it. So whether like there's a lot of listings that are just not really good up to par, poor pictures, poor EBC content or something like that. There's something lacking in there.
00:04:21
Speaker
And also I wanted to see if there's any room for differentiation as far as like adding to the product. Is there quality issues? Even looking at the rating, at the average rating between all of these sellers, like if the market average is like 3.9, 4.0, you know, that's a really good opportunity for a new seller to come in because typically if you're a new seller, you're probably gonna have five star rating, assuming you did your due diligence with your product and it checks out.
00:04:44
Speaker
And that will make a huge difference in your sales if you can maintain a higher rating than other people, even though you don't have as many reviews. So we look at these type of aspects of the market as a whole to see if there's any opportunity in there. And then obviously in the product market itself, if there's room to differentiate as far as like bundle pack or quantity change branding as well, if there's no branding, uh, amongst the competition, that's a really good opportunity for us to come in and, you know, build a a product off of that as well.
00:05:11
Speaker
awesome so you're looking at branding you're looking at utility like is there a product that is like not optimized for use like for example I was just doing a video with someone else and they were like trying to buy an outdoor fan and yeah most outdoor fans are incredibly noisy yeah and so that's an opportunity.
Analyzing Market Trends and Demand
00:05:28
Speaker
Or, ah you know, we just did one for like this pet fountain where like, ah you know, a pet drinks water out of and most of them like looked really ugly. And so one of the differentiators was a super aesthetic one. So you're looking at utility, you're looking at branding, you're looking at just an under optimized listing and you're saying, okay, cool. These people are already making money. Now, what if I came in there with a better use, a better solution product, with better branding, with, you know, an optimized listing. I'm definitely going to make, you know, at least some money, especially with, you know, good reviews right off the bat, correct? Yeah. And our goal really isn't to like take a large percentage of the market either. We're really looking for, I would say just like one to 5% or 10% of the market. Cool. So how are you validating demand for a certain product? Do you have certain like key metrics? So is it, you know, that $200,000 mark? Are you looking at search volume? Are you looking at the trend of the revenue and search volume? So, you know, are you potentially opening up and saying, okay, it used to do 300,000. Now it's doing 200,000. That's a red flag. The main keyword used to have 300,000 searches. Now it's at 100,000 that search flag. What are you kind of your validation criteria? Our main validation criteria is going to come down to mostly the total revenue that's being made and also keyword search volume. And it's not really particularly like one keyword. If there's like a ton of volume, it's a collection of keywords. So we want to see that there's multiple keywords with enough search volume that kind of total up to maybe like 10,000 at least or 20,000 per month searches.
00:06:51
Speaker
So that kind of shows like okay, there's people actually searching for this product and want it, you know There's not like external traffic that is the sole reason this total market is doing really really well or a particular product as well So both ends revenue and keyword search volume as well Amazing and do you look for anything outside of Amazon like Google anything like that? Not particularly but I will say that I am very aware about like what I'm looking at through like the internet or if I'm at the store or if I'm on TikTok even like I'll be aware about certain products and kind of wonder like okay is there opportunity here on Amazon because there might be a ton of search volume for this product but no one's selling anything or anything good particularly you know so keep an eye out on in the public
Preference for Evergreen Products
00:07:33
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Like what are your thoughts on things like, for example, colostrum? That one has like blown up right on TikTok and creatine gummies and beef tallow, beef tallow skincare. So those are all categories that we've seen kind of blow up on TikTok. So is that another kind of way that you look for things? Are you looking for things that are trending on TikTok?
00:07:50
Speaker
you go check them out on Amazon you notice like hey there's you know no one really doing it well there is that another you know sort of research method i do think that's a good research method it's a bit tricky because you have to be careful because these products might start trending but they could also die off and so it's a very It's unpredictable, you know, it's a it's a more riskier but could be very profitable type of method and so like for us We will be testing that out and to see like where it's at But historically we've always gone for evergreen products like products that kind of sell you around Pet products home products that aren't really gonna go anywhere These are everyday products that we like to sell and just take a percentage of that right? but um I'm not gonna say that I would never do like a trendy product because We are in the works of trying some some stuff like
Enhancing Product Functionality
00:08:34
Speaker
that out Awesome. I love it, man. So let's talk about a little bit about differentiation. So you want to differentiate a product. So you figured out, okay, you know, this product is a great product. All the indicators are there. It's doing a certain number of revenue. It's growing. And now you actually want to hone in on like, how can I make it better? So you look at the branding that, you know, I can't figure that out. You look at the listings. Obviously, you know, you can make a better listing. What about utility? Like what are some things that you can do to make the product better in terms of like it being a better solution?
00:09:02
Speaker
Like ah functionality in a way, right? Yeah. So that's one of my favorite ways to differentiate a product is functionality and just literally improving the use of the product for the customer. Right. This is going to be beneficial if you can really display that in the photos as well and showcase that like this is a better use than your competitors, like a ours versus theirs. Right. I do think that's one of the best ones. For example, we launched a product recently that was kind of like related to a carry on type of item. And so something simple that we did was just adding like a name tag color to it. that is super, super simple, but it's like make sense for the product, right? you You have luggage, you don't want it to get lost. You want some information. If it ever does get lost, you have like your information, your name, phone number, whatever the case is, something as simple as that is not only, I don't know if it's a really a bundle, but more so like a functionality use, just more use for the product that people can appreciate. And so, and the way we find these ideas is number one, use common sense. Sometimes common sense is the best way.
00:09:57
Speaker
Number two is frequently bought together as well. That's a good one. And number three is reviews. Reading the reviews, getting the customer experience, looking at five star reviews because you want to know what's good about the product. So that way like you can keep what's good about the product. And then also the bad reviews, one star, two stars. So you can see what you can improve as well.
00:10:15
Speaker
Yeah you know I love that you mentioned the frequently bought together because one thing that I noticed I was actually looking at some carry-ons and one of the frequently bought together items was an air tag and so one thing could be you know maybe embedding an air tag inside of the carry-on so that it comes in and all you have to do is program it and now you'll never lose it you'll know you know kind of where it is probably the downside is that you know you have to have an iPhone yeah But like it's still like I think that's the sort of innovation and functionality right that is needed because then when people are looking at the search results They say okay These are all the same this one gives me something a little bit better right and you you want to put yourself in that mindset you want to kind of Think of it from the customer point of view as somebody who would buy the product like what would I like out of this product? You know, so I think putting it in a different perspective helps a lot in figuring out what's a good differentiator on the product. And I think a common mistake people do as well is when they differentiate too much or in a way that doesn't make sense. You know, they'll put like a dog bowl with like, I don't know, like a water bottle or something like that, which doesn't particularly make all great sense. You know, like it can actually hurt your listing. You know, if you differentiate the wrong way, it could hurt because people might end up seeing the listing and they say think, oh, it's more expensive. It's bundled with an item I don't really need. So well, I'm not going to buy it.
00:11:27
Speaker
You know, so double edged sword there.
Launching with Vine Reviews and PPC
00:11:29
Speaker
I love it, man. So let's get into the launch strategy. So walk me through now, you know, you figured out the product, you have a differentiated product. Let's go like all the way from the beginning. You know, your your products are receiving an Amazon. What are you doing with the listing? And then what is your launch strategy? So we're taking advantage of Vine reviews right now. Before we didn't really use them too much, but they've been really increasing and really quality reviews as well. I think Amazon has been favoriting Vine reviews and putting a lot more weight on them as well. So we make sure that the product is brand registered, has a trademark, and then you could take advantage of Vine reviews and get about 30 reviews for free, but you're paying for these reviews basically.
00:12:05
Speaker
And so we we make sure the product has optimized photos, optimized copywriting, and it has those reviews in before we do a full-blown launch. I think it's okay to do a soft launch and like maybe you have no reviews or maybe just one review and you can do like an automatic campaign and just kind of see how it runs. But really advise waiting until your listing is fully complete. Has some reviews, 5 to 20 at least is really good.
00:12:28
Speaker
and then start your launch from there. And this is where we mainly just use Amazon PBC, like strictly just that to launch our product and get as much views as possible on there. And we'll do a mix of automatic and manual campaigns and product targeting campaigns.
00:12:42
Speaker
I love it man and so you know when it comes to the vine something I want to mention is I don't know if you know about this but there's something where like you can stack the vine reviews where for example like you're launching driven right you can maybe ask for your manufacturer to make a few samples of extra 50 units or 50 packs of like five different other flavors that are just going to be a one-time run. I don't know how feasible that is, right? But even if you can't, maybe you put like the drink with like a shaker and you have like five different variations of it with five different color shakers. So now you have six variations on your listing and each one of them would qualify for 30 reviews and then you would essentially would get 180 reviews. something bat yeah So that's, you know, one cool strategy I learned to take even better advantage of the vine reviews. Yeah, I haven't used that recently, but for probably our next launch, or even with Driven, we probably will start trying that out. I love it, man.
Marketing Strategies and Competitor Targeting
00:13:34
Speaker
Cool. All right. And you mentioned PPC. You launch auto campaigns, manual campaigns, you know, all match types. I brought phrase exact and product targeting. Can you walk me through some campaign structures and walk me through like how you're selecting your keywords? Yeah, absolutely. So first off, it's, there's a certain mindset you like to think about for PPC and with PPC, it's kind of like you're casting a net onto Amazon and you're trying to capture as many views as possible. And then the more views you have, more conversions you can get. And then equaling a sale, right?
00:14:01
Speaker
so we want to be able to cast our net as wide as possible so we'll get multiple campaigns automatic which is i actually learned from you recently doing multiple automatics of just their targeting match type which is close loose and then substitute probably those three i don't really like compliments often usually doesn't work and loose is probably not that good either yeah loose hit is hit or miss for sure but ever since i tried that method i would say those three have worked the best so far. So thank you for that. i got But tried that as well and manual targeting campaigns. So we'll do, we'll test broad phrase and exact, cause I think they all kind of play a certain role in getting that reach to customers. We like to limit our campaigns to five to 10 keywords and structure them in based off of search volume as well. So like if it's really heavy search volume keyword, you're going to have less keywords in those campaigns. If they're a lot more long tail, smaller search volume, 500, a thousand searches,
00:14:54
Speaker
We'll group more keywords in those two campaigns. And then product targeting as well, really, really important. I think is underutilized product targeting, very strategic about product targeting. So we're not just randomly picking all these ASINs that Amazon suggests we're being very selective about it. So picking out these product targeting campaigns.
00:15:11
Speaker
towards competitors that maybe have a higher price point and we have better price point or their listing isn't as good or their rating isn't as good or they don't have as many reviews as us as well or they don't have the same offer as us as well. So we'll take advantage of that and go after these products that are lacking that we know we're better than. So I think that's one of my most powerful campaigns as well. So in our campaigns I would say automatic and product targeting are one of the best campaigns that we run.
00:15:37
Speaker
I love it, man. and And how much are you looking to spend during the launch? Do you have, you know, kind of a target? It kind of depends. I would say like, ah we'll probably start off kind of conservative, maybe spend about $30 per campaign, but it doesn't usually spend all of it. It'll probably spend a decent amount, ah like a majority or if half of it. And then we'll start increasing it as we see performance go. So we'll test it for a little bit, depending how well it does. If it does really well, we'll give it more breathing room. If it doesn't do as well, then we'll probably lower it or cut it off completely.
00:16:06
Speaker
Awesome, man. I love that because, you know, for me, I'm the exact same way I launched my campaigns and I'll let them run for a little bit and then I'll figure out what's optimized, what's not optimized and whatever works, I'll double down and I'll scale. For me, I'm always looking to grow my ad spend because growing my ad spend ultimately means I can grow the revenue. But obviously it's like a balancing it's a balancing act and and it's also heavily dependent on my conversion rate because like in the first few days, conversion rate is trash because you have zero reviews. But as maybe the Vine reviews come in or some of the other reviews come in, that conversion rate improves and and my sales would go up. So oh yeah speaking of conversion rate and and reviews, do you have any other strategies for reviews that you use besides the Vine? We'll use friends and family. So one of my favorite ways, I mean, it's a gray hat method, but I'll have basically one of my friends buy the product and they'll also find five other people for me. So that's one of my favorite ways of doing it. And then maybe one of their friends will find five other people as well. And so that kind of helps get the initial reviews, but we won't rely on too much of that. That would be just like the first few. And then after that, it would be mostly reliant on vine and then organic reviews as well.
00:17:11
Speaker
And getting those organic reviews, we also use like insert cards that are Amazon, you know, compliant as well. And then Amazon has their own like, ask for a review on the internal side of things, you know, like when you go to your orders, you can like manually request a review, basically. So
Handling Negative Ratings
00:17:26
Speaker
those are some ways. Yeah. And there's tools like feedback five and Cellerize, like an automate all of that. Yeah. yeah But I found some trouble using those sometimes.
00:17:34
Speaker
ah Yeah, for me, I was using Helium 10s and I didn't see success with it. And then I switched to a different tool and then I saw a big spike in the ratings. oh I'm also, you know, I'm somewhat concerned in the ratings that are coming in because people are just like rating it. So they might just rate it as a one star, right? And it's like, there's no way to even know because it like, it's just a rating. It's a star rating. Ratings, I hate ratings because you can't do anything about it.
00:17:57
Speaker
But if it's a review, then you can actually respond to it. You could do something about it, but you never know what the rating is. Just one star. Yeah, you're done. It's like one star. You can do anything about it. You just take it. It's true. Now, it makes sense sometimes if you're like if you have thousands of reviews and you're like at a four point five stars. And it's like, okay, sure. Even if a hundred like three star reviews or two star reviews come in, they're just going to increase my number and not affect my rating so much. But when you're starting out small, you have to be really careful. I mean, I'm even worried about vine. Like sometimes I will, I would rather get friends and family first. Yeah. Because if a bad vine comes in, it'll, it'll affect me a little bit as opposed to a bad vine coming in early on hurts a lot. Vine vine reviews can be brutal, bro. Like, yeah. They they're like elite Yelp reviewers. So like if you are not confident in your product, they will roast your product completely. Yeah. And I think honestly, the ultimate path to getting reviews is when Amazon allows the vine program to go from 30 to 100 to 200. Yes. Because then it's like they're helping all these, you know, reviewers and also products are getting, you know, quote unquote honest reviews. Yeah. I wonder, do you think they're going to lean more towards that path? I mean, they've gone from nothing to 30 viral views. So I think it might go up over time because Amazon is constantly battling fake reviews. I don't even call them fake reviews. They're battling incentivized reviews. So the only way for you to control the narrative is for you to allow it. people don't have to resort to it. I'm doing a lot of incentivized reviews, and it's like, what do you want from me? I'm not getting reviews naturally. No one's leaving a review, and I can't succeed on Amazon without it, so you're almost forcing me. You gotta do something about it. Yeah, you're also forcing my hand, but if they opened it up, it's almost like they have this program in LA where they give you needles, and so everyone's like, oh my god, you're giving druggies needles.
00:19:47
Speaker
I'm like, well, they're going to get it from the street and then they're going to get like, they're going to die. yeah Or you just give them fresh needles. So it's kind of like that thing. It's like, and prevent that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So getting ahead of the curve, I hope they do it. I hope they expand it more because that would be, that would change the game. I think that would help new sellers a lot and just make it a lot more of a, I don't know, friendly market is the right word, but more beginner friendly, maybe.
Exploring TikTok and Caution with Paid Ads
00:20:09
Speaker
Yeah. And one other thing I want to touch on before we end this is you mentioned this before we recorded. Are you doing anything in terms of external traffic during the launch? Absolutely not at the moment, but maybe we'll try in the future. I've had a few people like asking about Google at the moment. I don't know if I really am all for it. The only external traffic I would consider is to talk at the moment with organic traffic from there. Because I mean, you can't beat organic traffic. This is free 99. So that's the type of advertising I like. But at the moment, I don't think we have any plans for like Facebook ads or Google ads at the moment, we're probably gonna stick to Amazon only and then also tick tock shop or tick tock organic traffic. Yeah, I'm a huge fan of tick tock shop because so first of all, like if you have no budget, you could technically yourself create a bunch of content without even giving it to anyone like you could just yourself record in your home and and and
00:20:58
Speaker
put out that content and some of it might pop off and that is all gonna be you know visibility that could drive sales to Amazon. If you want, you could then go after affiliates and like TikTok shop makes it amazing and super automated to go after affiliates. You can essentially you know give them the product for free in exchange for them creating content about you. and they you know they post videos and it's all that goes to TikTok shop but people will still see the product and go to Amazon and so I like TikTok shop because it is for me finally a scalable way of getting organic views yeah and even I can boost them with paid ads as well so it works very well and now it is like a shotgun approach like it is not a targeted campaign where you know that this campaign has resulted in more sales on Amazon but it's something you know and it costs way less than like trying to go after like influencers on instagram for example a lot of people have asked me as well like do you think tiktok shop has comp compete against amazon or do you think it's go to be like taking over amazon or anything anything like that i think it's just gonna aid amazon if anything else like Amazon's infrastructure is just so well done and like so far ahead of everybody else that people who are buying on TikTok shop or or seeing products on there, they're already going on Amazon anyways. They're going to just search it up and see if they can get it faster, cheaper, et cetera. So I think if anything, like although TikTok and TikTok shop is the future, it's all the at the same time, just eating Amazon.
00:22:19
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. I agree. Awesome, man. Kevin, thank you so much for for ah joining me on the channel, man. Is there any final words you have for for any of the sellers out there? Yeah, absolutely. So you guys make sure that you know your numbers when you're doing Amazon. It's super important. I see a lot of people making mistakes as far as launching products and not knowing how much profit they would make, how much inventory they need. So I think one of the most important things is really know your numbers before you move forward. And that's really it. Have fun selling. I love it, man. All right, guys. See you in the next one.