#380 – 7-Figure Seller Tips About Germany, Etsy, & Amazon

Today, we interview two guests in one podcast. Our first guest Marco Schoch is from Berlin, Germany. He shares his story of how he got started in eCommerce with the help of his “how can I make it happen” mindset. His business is estimated to make $7 million in revenue selling in German marketplaces. A good thing to know is Amazon Germany is not his top-selling marketplace! He introduces us to a new german marketplace that you may not even hear of before. Our next guest is Natali Petrova. She shares updates on her matcha tea business and how expanding her line of products and adding more SKUs helped her sell $1 million last year. She also talked about her cool hacks on Etsy, dealing with breakable products and Google Ads. This is a great episode hope you listen to the end and enjoy it!

In episode 380 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, Marco, and Natali discuss:

• 01:45 – Make Sure To Listen To SSP In German
• 02:15 – Marco’s Backstory And He Got Started In E-commerce
• 07:15 – Will Finish 2022 With $7 Million In Revenue
• 08:45 – The How Can I Make It Happen Mindset
• 09:40 – Starting In Amazon Germany And Expanding To Other Marketplaces
• 11:11 – Making More Money In Otto.de Than In Amazon.de
• 13:00 – How Does He Fulfill Orders For Otto
• 13:40 – Where Marco Sources His Goods
• 15:45 – How To Find Good Suppliers In Eastern Europe
• 18:15 – Marco’s 30-Second Tips
• 20:15 – Using Helium 10’s MarketTracker 360 In Amazon Germany
• 23:00 – Natali Sold $1 Million Last Year And Expanding To More SKUs
• 25:10 – Selling Matcha Tea On Etsy
• 29:15 – Dealing With Breakable Products
• 31:00 – Working With TikTok Influencers
• 32:40 – Trying A Holiday Gift Sets Strategy
• 36:30 – Natali’s Google Ads And Etsy Strategies
• 40:55 – Should Helium 10 Develop An Etsy Tool? Let Us Know!
• 42:26 – Watch The BBL Next Week For Some New Helium 10 Features

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today, we’ve got two guests for the price of one. The first is a seller who is selling close to eight figures in Germany and the marketplaces he gets the most sales from aren’t, even Amazon Germany. And the other is a former guest that we had who a couple of years ago wasn’t even selling on Amazon and now she has grown her business to seven figures of sales, and she’s got some cool Etsy hacks as well. How cool is that? Pretty cool I think. Are you an agency enterprise-level seller or an eight or nine-figure seller and need advanced analytics Market Tracker 360 might be the product for you to get a demo of Market Tracker 360, go to h10.me/mt360. That’s h10.me/mt360. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the serious seller’s podcast by Helium 10. I am your host Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that’s a completely BS free unscripted, and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Again, going to the other side of the world, we’ve got somebody, I believe you’re in Germany right now, another side of the world, right? Where are you at specifically? What city?

Marco:

In Berlin, Germany

Bradley Sutton:

When people are listening to this it’s gonna be like right, actually during Sell and Scale Summit, but I think you said you’re getting your flight tomorrow to go to Sell and Scale Summit. So I’ll be able to see you in person there, but I wanna go back in history, I don’t know much about you. I know you were on the German version of our podcast, so I say to everybody out there, (Speaks German), if you do, you should be also listening to the Serious Sellers Podcast auf Deutsch by Marcus Mokros. Whatever you’re listening to this on guys, just type Serious Sellers Podcast auf Deutsch, and you can just subscribe there, one episode a week and you would see Marco had an episode on there. I do not speak German at all. So I have no idea what that episode was about, but Marcus told me was like, Hey, this was a very interesting episode. And I think you should interview this guy. So I’m like, all right, let’s do it. So is Berlin, Germany where you were born and raised?

Marco:

Yes. Originally I’m from Berlin. I was traveling a little bit in Germany or relocating a couple of times in Germany. But in the end, I came back to Berlin because here I have friends here and family. So 10 years living in other cities, I’m now back in Berlin since I don’t know, five years or 10 years.

Bradley Sutton:

And what did you study in university, if anything?

Marco:

I was not in university, so I started with a commercial education just to have some kind of job. And then it was a little bit boring for me. I thought, oh, I want to do something bigger. I want to do something bigger, built up for a company, a department and was more successful then I sort, but I want to do more. I want to do more. And then at the later stage, I have done some additional studies in parallel to the book. So not a kind of bachelor’s or master’s. It was something close to it in Germany. So I’ve done then two studies in the economy and one in logistics and this kind of studies. So kind of studies and still, it’s not enough. I want to do more. I want to do more.

Bradley Sutton:

So how did you discover e-commerce?

Marco:

My background is in logistics, so I’ve done a lot of logistics stuff. Like, like, like international logistics, procurement, and such things. And in 2018 I was unemployed and I thought always build things for other companies. Isn’t there any opportunity to build something for me? And then I thought, I only know logistics, so I want to build my own logistic, but for logistics, I need some or something. And then I thought it makes sense to have something that I can put on trucks, because I know trucks, I can put something on pallets. I thought I need something, which is a little bit bigger than I can start to build my logistic. And this way I started with children’s pets. So one of my former colleagues has mentioned, that I try children’s beds. Maybe there’s an opportunity.

Marco:

Then I went to Poland to a factory. I say, Hey, you are producing children’s beds. I have absolutely no idea. But I want to start with e-commerce. I have no customers. I have no supplier. I have no clue. I have no processes. I have nothing, but I know what a truck is. I want to buy a full truck workload of children’s beds. And they say, are you crazy? Are you nuts? You are not serious. And then to be honest, we had a two hours discussion until they saw the struggle to me. I’ve asked them, do you imagine that you could sell something to me? Yes. Do you know your top sellers? Yes. Would you think about that? You sell it to me. Yes. But you need to pay. I say, yes, I can pay. But maybe not no cash, but when you send me a bill, then I sent you the money tomorrow.

Marco:

So it was two hours discussion until they sold it to me. And also we starting with e-commerce. I thought I need to pay my bills. So I thought, what do I want to achieve with e-commerce at the end, I have two children. I want to pay all bills. I need to ensure that everything is on track. I thought I need to have for months, let’s say 2,500 bucks or something like this to be able to pay everything, but I cannot do it in the beginning. Then I’ve done my five years plan. Yeah. I avoid in five years, I want to have a 2,500 Euro income per month. To do so, I guess I need maybe 1 million in revenue, no idea then. So, I have no clue. I have nothing. Where do I start then? Then I thought, okay. To start something is very difficult to double is much easier than I’ve made it half of it. So in, in five years, 1 million revenue, four years, 500 thousand.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, well what happened to the truckload of beds?

Marco:

Yeah, as I’m from logistics on the way back in the car, I quote a friend. I say there will be a truckload of children’s beds. Please collect it with your trucks, and put it in your warehouse. I have no idea then. I have–

Bradley Sutton:

You didn’t even have like a website or anything at this time?

Marco:

No, nothing, nothing.

Bradley Sutton:

Well, what made you decide to get children’s beds in Poland?

Marco:

That’s what I told you. Yeah. I saw, that I want to do my 1 million revenue in five years. So it means in the first year I need to do 50 million revenue, whatever it takes. Yeah. And then I need to do 50,000 revenue and for 50,000 revenue, I need to have something. And I thought I have no idea how I can sell that. Yeah. But I need to have something. Then, then I bought it. And so I had already the truckload of children’s beds in the warehouse of a friend, and then I’ve checked e-commerce, everyone says, Amazon let’s make an account of Amazon. How does this stuff work? So long story short in the first two years I lost money with it. Yeah. But it was helpful for me because I had goods. Goods are pushing me to find solutions to sell them.

Marco:

That was pushing me towards Amazon. Then I introduced a warehouse management system. So I’ve started to build processes. So I’ve done some consulting in PARALIA that money is coming in. And then in PARALIA, I was learning on the job how e-commerce works. So it took me, let’s say one and a half, maximum two years where I really lost money. I would say in total, I’ve lost 20,000. Something like this in one and a half years. And then I’ve done a turnaround cause I’ve understood how, how this business more or less works. And now I do four years, this business, this year, we will finish with minimum 7 million revenue I have in time between 11 people. So yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

You make a five-year plan then.

Marco:

Yes by far.

Bradley Sutton:

But now guys, I just wanna make sure everybody’s clear. We are not saying that this is the way to start a business. Let’s go to Poland and buy a truckload of children’s beds that we have no idea what to do with it worked out for Marco here. Okay. But please, I don’t wanna hear at the Sell and Scale Summit. Oh, Bradley said, I should just go to random countries and just buy truckloads of nonsense and I’ll be a millionaire in four years. No, no, no, but we gotta hear his story so we gotta understand, you know, the journey here. So your seven, 8 million of revenue is that like what you’re projected to do maybe this year? Or what was that mean?

Marco:

The original plan for this year was 1 million, which makes it by one. And for two years, we are here in an office and two years ago, I thought, okay, this original plan does not really work out. I have now a team. I want to have some targets. I need to have something new that I’ve mentioned to my team. Let’s make it very easy. We will do it much slower now because it’s not needed. I’m happy. Yeah. Let’s just double every year. And we had, at that time two, a half million revenue. Okay. Doubled two half, five, 10, whatever. So I end up with, ah, let’s do in five years, 100 million revenue. The first two weeks I saw that’s absolutely crazy. I was laughing. I thought, ah, why do I discuss 100 million revenue? But then I thought, when I was working for multinational companies, they do not discuss targets.

Marco:

It is just simply saying, this is a target. And always I was overachieving. Then I thought, why the hell can I not make it happen for myself? Then I told my team, Hey guys, let’s go for 100 million. We have done the next thing of five years plan towards 100 million. So we are absolutely unhappy because we are underperforming this year. The plan was 12 and a half million. And we, we are only at seven, but at the end, it’s not a question for us when anyone says, oh, it’s not realistic. I simply do not want to hear it for me. The only question is how can I make it happen to achieve the 100 million? And the first thing which I figured oh, is it’s impossible when I do everything by myself. So I need to build a team and this is a journey where we are now.

Bradley Sutton:

So how many employees do you have?

Marco:

At the moment 11.

Bradley Sutton:

11 employees. All right. Now, when you’re talking about this revenue I mean, did you start in Amazon Germany or did you start all over Amazon Europe? Where are the main marketplaces where this revenue is coming from?

Marco:

At the moment we do business 99% to Germany only, and one person to Austria. So I’ve started with Amazon in Germany. Then I’ve seen also when I consider the languages, the tech system, and the regulations, it’s much easier to go onto other markets in Germany rather than doing international business with Amazon. I would say to enable the products to be sorted and oil countries, that’s just a click on the books. Yeah. And then I say over all countries and Europe, but afterward, I have all the complexity with the tax and liability and whatever, and this is why I always stop it. And I say, as soon as we are prepared in a way that we say we do the next country, then we will start with Amazon. We are preparing Amazon fronts in the moment. Then we do this step. So then with tax prepared with the product description and product liability, everything was really prepared. Then we do the next market.  I’m really astonished about that. I hear a lot of times that people say, Hey, I do Amazon across over the world where you’re saying, but what happens with our tax declarations? And I do not want to have this problem, and this is why we focus on the moment in Germany only.

Bradley Sutton:

How many marketplaces in Germany are you selling in other than Amazon of course?

Marco:

We are listed in the moment on I think seven different marketplaces, but realistically, OTTO is a newcomer as a marketplace in Germany it’s a very big company and their marketplace is really a huge number. So we do in the time between more revenue on OTTO than on Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

Whoa, whoa. This new marketplace, you’re saying you do more revenue there than Amazon?

Marco:

Yes. So from my point of view, I would say for the German market, OTTO is–

Bradley Sutton:

How do you spell the website?

Marco:

otto.de

Bradley Sutton:

otto.de. Okay.

Marco:

This is a very big company, which is focusing on the German market and they started I think two years ago with marketplace business and OTTO is, I don’t know how much revenue they do for sure. Minimum 5 billion. I don’t have the numbers in mind. So from my point of view, when it comes to the German market, OTTO is an absolute relevant player, absolute relevant. So at the moment, I have the feeling that OTTO still sees itself as a kind of underdog. And we are careful, we don’t say anything against Amazon, but they are growing that fast. So from my point and the most exciting thing, they have their own logistic structure. They have their own parcel system in Germany, which is called Hermes. They have a large parcel business.

Marco:

So that means when you sell sofas in the German market, they have their own logistic network for it. So when you say, who is more relevant Alibaba or OTTO for the German market, “I would say Alibaba, who?” Because from my, from my point of view, it’s absolutely auto, which is a more relevant market in Germany. So we are doing the business on OTTO, then we do Amazon. Then we do Kaufland, which was for former real, this marketplace was sold to Kaufland. eBay, I would say it depends on the seller for us, eBay is not that relevant. And then you have some niche marketplaces, which are relevant for children’s beds, which are more focused on families. But the revenue and profit is at a lower level. So the three most relevant things, three most relevant marketplaces are OTTO, Amazon, and Kaufland.

Bradley Sutton:

Off of Amazon. How are you fulfilling the orders? Does OTTO also have their own warehouses where you store things kind of like FBA or are you shipping yourself or how are you managing that?

Marco:

50% of our stuff we do with an external warehouse, which is in Berlin. So we buy our products from Eastern Europe that’s then shipped with, for workloads to the external warehouse, from the external warehouse it’s shipped to the customer. And the second part of the business is drop ship. So we are getting the orders from customers to pass it through to the factories. In the factories, we have stock, which is rendered for us, pre-produced for us, and then shipped straight from Central Europe to German customers.

Bradley Sutton:

Do you source from China or India at all, or it’s a hundred percent Eastern Europe is where your manufacturers are

Marco:

At the moment, 100% Eastern Europe. One of the reasons is as I have started bootstrapped I need to be very, very careful what I do with my money and when I want to grow very fast, I do not want to put money on the plate and wait three months for the goods. So it was for me, easier to start with lower margin and Central Europe.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Interesting. Now there, well, we don’t have a transcript of our German podcast, our English podcast, by the way, guys, if you ever wanted to read a podcast, we actually transcribe every word. And you can see those helium10.com/podcast. But what we do have on our German page, which is helium10.com/german, we have like these timestamps that Marcus, our host of that podcast he’ll make timestamps just so you can have an idea. And so I did a Google translate. So I have a question about suppliers, cuz I’m not sure if Google translated this correctly, but according to Google translate, let me read it here. It says he contacts 100 suppliers before launching a new product. Is that a correct translation? Is that what you said on the other podcast?

Marco:

When we want to launch a new product, we want that this product is a best seller. I’m fine was one bestseller in a year which is also would be fine, but I want to be a best seller on the keyword where we try to work which means I need to contact a lot of suppliers. I need to see, can they produce it for the price? Can they produce it for quality? And there is a reason why other companies are selling on this keyword in the moment they have huge experience. They are really good. The pros are that mean when we want to find a supply chain and a supplier, which is better, we can build a best seller in this niche. It means it’s not the first supplier. It’s not the second. When you have contacted 100 suppliers, I’m sure you have one supplier in it, which is a very, very good fit. When you’ve contacted only three suppliers. I can usually show you can sell somehow something, you can bleed a lot with PPC campaigns, but you will no way do a bestseller.

Bradley Sutton:

How, how do you find, I don’t even know how to find one supplier in Eastern Europe let alone 100. So are there websites kind of like Alibaba is for other parts of the world or how do you find? Cause I can understand, you know, whether I live in Europe or, you know, I live in America and I’m interested in man I’m interested in selling in Amazon Germany or Amazon Poland or Amazon France, et cetera. I could definitely see how it might be advantageous to find European suppliers because of the reasons you mentioned. So if I’m interested in that, how would I go about that?

Marco:

I think there are a lot of services available. So when we really are looking for suppliers, we try to search in all areas. But bottom line, the best thing from my point of view, really the best thing is when we check who is selling in Eastern European countries on markets. That means when you have, for example, Alibaba, we don’t use it. Yeah. But in case I would use Alibaba, I would check who is from Poland and is selling on Alibaba, Poland. The counterpart is Alegro in Poland, which is a relevant market for the Polish.

Bradley Sutton:

How do you spell that?

Marco:

Alegro. So what we do is who is selling in Poland stuff. So it’s very likely that these are not the most expensive products. Yeah. So nobody would sell very expensive German products on the Polish market. So that means you have a lot of Polish producers, which are selling on this Polish market. And then this is the first thing that we contact them. We say, Hey, we have some specifications of some products, which we need. It seems that you have machines which would enable you to produce the product we are looking for. Let’s meet. Can you pull some samples for us? Then you start in alignment. This is one source. And the second source as we already have a small network of suppliers, it’s always a recommendation, which is the best. So when you have recommendations from existing suppliers, I always tell my team ideas, 30% of the ideas are ours.

Marco:

30% of other ideas are from customers, even with previous or whatever. And the other 30% of the ideas is suppliers. So when I’m looking for a new niche where I say, I would like to sell X, Y, Z, the first thing I do, one of the first things I do is I contact an existing supplier and say, Hey, do we have an idea for me. And then they think about, they say, oh, I have heard of something, try this person. So for me, it’s Alegro and it’s contacting existing suppliers, which is the most beneficial thing in parallel research, also Google and other areas, but this is the most beneficial.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Interesting. All right. Well, that’s a unique tip and you’ve been giving us different tips. Before we go off the call here maybe one or two more unique tips, or strategies that you’re using for your Amazon business or just your other e-commerce businesses that you think not the typical seller is using already.

Marco:

When we sell our best sellers. From my point of view, every month we redo this article. So from my point of view, whatever your top article is or whatever it needs to be redone, redone, redone, redone. Our top selling article is in the moment a house bed feel free to check it out. Yeah, I think in the last two or three years where we are selling this article, we have done pictures minimum 15 times. So as soon as we have really great new pictures, we see competitors are copying this, which is the Amazon model, but we want to be a step ahead. You do new pictures, you do new content, you do new A+ Content. PPC, you always want to do what you need to, you need to be a step ahead. So from my point of view, the most important thing is whatever the best seller is, you must redo it and redo it and redo it. You need to invest more work into this article. It’s not all this article is done. I focus on the next one. The last thing we have done is we have introduces the 360 tool which was just launched by Helium 10 also to get more insights, which means we are redoing our top sellers now again, with all these learnings, which we have.

Bradley Sutton:

Are you talking about Market Tracker 360?

Marco:

Yes. Yes.

Bradley Sutton:

Also. So I didn’t know anybody from–, it works for Germany?

Marco:

Yes.

Bradley Sutton:

I didn’t even know that. So you’re teaching me something about Helium 10 today. So yeah, Market Tracker 360 guys is one of our advanced analytics. So, so what kind of interesting trends have you found with Market Tracker 360? Because that, when I look at it for the US market, it’s like kind of interesting where you can really see it kind of like at the brand level, you know who’s moving and who’s shaking and what they did before. Who’s on the decline? Who’s coming up? I’m just curious. What use case have you been using market tracker 360 for the German market?

Marco:

Yeah, we have one competitor which started, I think one and a half years ago, and he is copying everything off it. And we really want to see every movement which he is doing. And in the past, it was a little bit difficult to get the information we are looking for. And now it’s really great. Now we can really see exactly what he is doing and this is really great also to protect our stuff.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. Awesome. All right, guys, if you’re interested this is not for new sellers or even six-figure sellers, maybe even low seven-figure sellers. This is for the kind of like the big players kind of like Marco is here. So if you have some mid-high seven figures of sales or more, and you’re interested to get a free demo, go to h10.me/mt360. I literally did not know that you were one of our users. So I’m glad you brought that up because I sometimes forget who pays the bills of this podcast and I get so into it and I forget to mention Helium 10, but there we go. So alright, so Sell and Scale Summit important question. Will you be coming to my Zumba fitness dancing class on Tuesday morning?

Marco:

Yes.

Bradley Sutton:

Excellent. Excellent. I don’t have any German songs, but we’ll have a lot of fun and then also make sure to come to the Maldives Honeymoon strategy session I’ll be doing on Wednesday afternoon. So anyways Marco is great to talk to you. We’ll be talking in person soon. You’re not an agency or anything do you want people to be able to reach you at all or look you up or reach out to you? If not, then totally fine.

Marco:

From my point of view, a strong network, that’s the best we can do. So from my point of view, anyone who’s interested feel free to reach out to me. And let’s find common strengths.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, well, we have one more interview and so we’ll go ahead and go to that right now. All right. Next up for our second guest of the day, we’ve got Natalie from Florida, Natalie, how’s it going?

Natali:

It’s great. Hi, Bradley.

Bradley Sutton:

Interestingly enough, you were in, I was just looking at this. You were in episode 256. So guys, if you want her full backstory she moved to the US from Ukraine and, and started off working for actually another person who was on our podcast before and then just started her own thing. She used like the Project X strategy to kind of like launch some products on Amazon and she was in the Matcha Tea at the time, at least a year ago. I don’t know what you’re doing these days, so we’re gonna find out live with everybody else. But that was a really, really interesting episode. And it was done in the summertime of 2021. So I don’t remember. We probably had said, I probably had said, Hey, what was your projected sales gonna be? And you probably said something, but what did your sales more or less end up being for last year?

Natali:

It was around a million dollars.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. And was it strictly, just like tea kind of products?

Natali:

Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Excellent. How many SKUs did you end the year with approximately?

Natali:

So now we actually added not just teas. We also added accessories and we have tons of like bowls and whisks.

Bradley Sutton:

A bowl. So what would you use a Matcha bowl for?

Natali:

Like when you make Matcha, you put some water in a bowl that you add a teaspoon of Matcha, and then you whisk it to prepare Matcha tea, and then you can–

Bradley Sutton:

You gotta be super fancy to do that, I guess, right?

Natali:

It’s kinda a meditation in the morning. I dunno. I enjoy this process. It’s like people who drink coffee, they enjoy the process of making coffee. And people who drink Matcha, they enjoy this process of making Matcha, always like whisking it and like all this using all these things.

Bradley Sutton:

Was it something that you yourself were already using or because you’re in this niche, you saw that there was a demand for it?

Natali:

Yeah, we definitely were using it. I enjoy this process, this experience in the morning. So we wanted to have something, not what a whole market has, all this, like Chinese cheap bowls. We found Japanese bowls, they all like handcrafted by people over there and we brought them from Japan.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So accessories now, Matcha, you did a million last year, you know, obviously, we’re, we’re barely, almost about to get to Q4 here. Do you have any like based on the year to date so far, do you think you’re gonna do better than last year? Or is it a little bit slower since e-commerce is a little bit slower for some? What do you think?

Natali:

I think if we talk about Matcha only–

Bradley Sutton:

No, your whole account

Natali:

My whole account will be bigger. And we also launch more on different other marketplaces. So we also sell a lot on Etsy and Walmart and from our website, since we launch.

Bradley Sutton:

You can’t actually sell tea on Etsy or can you?

Natali:

Yeah. You can.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh really?

Natali:

Yeah, we do.

Bradley Sutton:

So there’s like a category for like edibles and grocery and stuff or not grocery, but like food.

Natali:

Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people actually do this.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, I don’t believe you. I need to go to Etsy right now. I thought Etsy was like only, I mean, I sell on Etsy, but like, I never thought I could sell edible stuff. I found it all about how to be handmade.

Natali:

A lot of people actually make tea at home and sell it. So they kind of combine.

Bradley Sutton:

Combine oh, interesting. Yeah. I type in Matcha to Etsy and tons of–, I see some of the stuff you like ceremonial grade Matcha that’s kinda like what you sell. All right. I see.

Natali:

Yeah, we sell that culinary stuff.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh my goodness gracious. I’m in love. Let me see if I can share my screen here for those watching. I just saw Matcha white chocolate chip sugar cookies on Etsy. And now my diet for today is ruined because I see I had before three minutes ago, I had no idea you could actually sell cookies or tea here on Etsy. That’s kind of shocking to me. I don’t know how, I didn’t know that, but interesting. I bet the accessories, like, do you price your accessories on Etsy higher than on Amazon? Or do you keep it at the same price?

Natali:

We keep it the same.

Bradley Sutton:

Try higher sometimes. Have you tried higher?

Natali:

It’s definitely selling way better on Etsy

Bradley Sutton:

As in the numbers is actually even more?

Natali:

Yeah. For accessories, for sure.

Bradley Sutton:

So like how many units a day like overall, are you selling on Etsy?

Natali:

Well, Etsy it’s about like three, five sets. We’re selling like gift sets. We’re not selling much, but the highest sales of these accessories are in October, November, and December. It’s like search volume increases approximately like three times on Google, and on Etsy, I believe it will be like five, six times more than your,

Bradley Sutton:

But there are some SKUs you said you’re actually selling more, that same exact SKU on Etsy than you are on Amazon, or did I misunderstand?

Natali:

Yeah. Cuz on Amazon, we only added them. We just added them maybe months ago and for now, we’re only doing wine reviews and just selling little by little, we didn’t do any like big lounges or anything. So on Amazon is still our best sellers are Matcha and Herbal teas. We sell a lot of Herbal teas from Ukraine actually.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, wow. Okay, cool. Now, how are you fulfilling–, I think you said Shopify and Etsy orders.

Natali:

We fulfill from home.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So, so you’re not using like you know merchant or the what is it called on Amazon? That one thing where you can just set up orders. It’s better. That’s what I do by the way. When I sell on Etsy a hundred percent, I ship just from my warehouse as opposed to trying to send Amazon inventory.

Natali:

If we sell bowl alone or if we sell only Whisk we would fulfill from Amazon. But if we buy on Etsy, we have different sets. So we combine them in different ways and give different types of variations. We don’t have that many variations on Amazon FBA. So we do combine everything and like create different sets from home.

Bradley Sutton:

Of these, I don’t know which one’s yours or not, but I’m just looking on Etsy, I’m looking on Amazon. It seems like some of these are kind of breakable, potentially these bowls.

Natali:

Sure. They are.

Bradley Sutton:

So a lot of people say, Hey, never sold anything. Breakable it’s a nightmare. How have you been dealing with that so far on these products?

Natali:

In the beginning? It was horrible. Yeah. A lot of people were returning because it was broken, but we found the way, how to package the way it’s not breaking. And for the last couple of months on Etsy, we didn’t get any returns, like zero returns.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So what changes did you make?

Natali:

Just a different way of packing. I don’t know. My husband is packing it. So he is like using all these materials, which saves it.

Bradley Sutton:

But that’s Etsy because that’s, you know, you guys are shipping those, but I’m assuming your Amazon are you doing FBA or you’re also fulfilling it yourself?

Natali:

Yeah, the same way we packed each bowl the way before we sent it to Amazon, we tested every single Nancy and we found the way, how to package the way it won’t break. So it all came to our house first and then we send everything to Amazon from our house.

Bradley Sutton:

Ah, okay. Very similar to how I do things as well. Didn’t you get a lot of initial, like traction, cuz your husband put like on a message board or some kind of website that was about these things and, and then it kind of went viral? Or am I completely making this up?

Natali:

Yeah. Yeah. That’s true. We’ve been–

Bradley Sutton:

Can you refresh my memory? Cause I just remember like bits and bits and pieces. And then, and then my follow-up question I guess is, have you still been using that strategy for like any new products that you launch or trying to like get some traction for your older products?

Natali:

Yeah, we do. And we have a lot of success with influencers actually. Mostly now we have had success with some TikTok influencers and we noticed that more people started becoming our influencers for our website, not Amazon. I’m not sure why they prefer it because we have an affiliate program on our website. So we noticed that our influencers kind of moved from Amazon to our website.

Bradley Sutton:

But you know, from your standpoint, isn’t it better to send? Which is better because you know, I know maybe you don’t get 15% charge, but if you’re sending traffic to Amazon, at least you get that Brand Referral bonus and then you get 10% of that back. So if you could choose where your influencers were sending their traffic to, would you personally want to send it to Shopify or would you prefer that if they go to Amazon?

Natali:

Definitely, Shopify because these people, these customers stay with us, we have their information, we can send them emails. They can subscribe to our website and we can just upsell them with all the other products we have.

Bradley Sutton:

Are you ever gonna consider doing that Buy with Prime button, like adding that to your website?

Natali:

Yeah, I guess we will. It’s a great option. We’ll see, we will definitely try and see how our sales and conversion going.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Now, one thing that I remember you said a few weeks ago when we were just talking is you were gonna try out a new strategy, this holiday season of almost making like holiday specific, like gift sets, like are these gift sets something you’re gonna have throughout the year or specifically something for Christmas or something like that?

Natali:

So that’s what we already launched. And this is why we started earlier to get reviews just to get it going and see what we should change before the holidays. But most of the sales, of course, we expect during holidays, I’m not even running any ads cuz I didn’t wanna spend money on this. Because I do expect that it will sell by itself during the holiday season. Like we didn’t buy too much. We bought like couple hundred of each style. And we believe in it.

Bradley Sutton:

So you haven’t done ads yet, but are you going to do ads and some specific things?

Natali:

You know, we’ll see if we need it, if it will sell on its own, then why would we? Like even now when we sell like three, five units a day, like Saturday, right? They’re like 60 to a hundred bucks. So it’s not bad on its own, cuz our margin is pretty good on this. And during the holiday season, I believe we’ll sell like 30, 40 units a day. I expect.

Bradley Sutton:

Excellent. Excellent. All right. Yeah. I definitely wanna keep up to date with that one because that’s that’s an interesting strategy. Not everything you can make a gift set, but you know, you’ve got the perfect product for that because you know, you’ve got, I’m assuming you’re, you’re putting some of your existing products together. Like maybe matcha with the bowl.

Natali:

We combine them all everywhere. We combine on our listing. We made–, not variations. Bundles. We made all different bundles and we had example–

Bradley Sutton:

The virtual bundles?

Natali:

Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay.

Natali:

And our stores. If we talk about Amazon on ads, say it’s just ranking already great. For all of the search terms, it’s just not enough to search volume. Not much search volume, I would say yeah for now. But I think the holiday season would be great

Bradley Sutton:

Nowadays. There is like, or at least in America, America’s kind of crazy. I think we have like every day of the year is a day of something, donut day and national bosses day and national pets day, and like literally every day of the year is something now they’re all major holidays, but I wonder if there’s like a list of these things. And then I guarantee like one of the ones that probably is not very popular like mother’s day or father’s day, would be national bosses day or national secretary’s day. I used to know that one because I used to be a, like an executive assistant, a secretary and both of those, I would look forward to national secretaries day and then bosses day I would have to buy something, but these are keywords guys that maybe only peak for a week, but that doesn’t mean, oh, you have one product and it’s only gonna be good for a week a year. This could be like whatever gift products that were popping for you in Christmas time. Just switch a couple of the words to like national boss’s day. And all of a sudden you could be like crushing the game. So I’d be curious.

Natali:

So we actually did it in mother’s day. Actually, we were sold out with few variations during mother’s day

Bradley Sutton:

Mother’s day. Okay.

Natali:

But we didn’t sell on Valentine’s day yet. So we’ll see next year

Bradley Sutton:

You need to have like a heart-shaped Matcha bowl.

Natali:

Yeah. We’ve already ordered a bowl with hearts.

Bradley Sutton:

Look at that. You see, you need to hire me to be part of your pro-brand team. I think we think alike. I like it. What’s your 30-second tip or your TST of the day? What’s something unique that you’ve been doing that you didn’t mention in the last episode? And we didn’t talk about yet today what you think Amazon sellers can, can, can learn from.

Natali:

I don’t remember if we talked about Google ads at all last time.

Bradley Sutton:

I think we talked about, did you use to work? That was like how you came to America was like you were a Google ads expert or something like that.

Natali:

Yeah. Yeah. I’ve been working with Google ads for over 10 years now and I’ve been working in agencies and I was–

Bradley Sutton:

All right, gimme your best Google ads strategy.

Natali:

So the worst part with Amazon is setting up Amazon attribution for Google ads because they don’t give you any instructions. And it’s like super hard to find any information, but you do need to figure it out and set up Google ads with attribution, you need to track every keyword you on there. Every ad group, every keyword, you can see all these reports in Amazon attribution. This way you can like cut what ad groups are not working for you, and what keywords are not working for you, you can find what keywords actually work for you and create a separate campaign for them just to have like separate budget for them and just manage them separately. What do you need, you need to not give up on the first couple of weeks because it’s really hard in the beginning because you are spending money and you are usually not profitable in the beginning compared to like Amazon ads, Amazon ads are easier to track and to understand here, you need more time. People start adding to carts, but they don’t buy right away. And if you just track your sales, you won’t actually see what Google can do for you in like a couple of months. So just in like a couple of months, when this all combines. When like people who add to cars, start buying and Amazon also start giving you this, how it calls this kind of refund for fees.

Bradley Sutton:

Yep. Brand referral bonus.

Natali:

Brand referral bonus. You can, and after you pause, not profitable ad groups, or keywords, you’ll start seeing really great results. Like Google ads are way cheaper than Amazon ads. And it also boosts your sales overall. I dunno how it works, but Amazon starts kind of putting you on different parts of their website where you weren’t before, if you send a lot of external traffic and it increases your overall amount of traffic from Amazon as well.

Bradley Sutton:

Any maybe Etsy tip or something, or do you just like put stuff on Etsy and just let her go? Or are you doing anything for optimization on there or do you have a different strategy?

Natali:

I do. I do a lot. I change tags. They have like keywords. Is Helium 10 going to work with Etsy?

Bradley Sutton:

Well, if there’s enough demand we’re going to, we’ve definitely looked into it. Right now, I don’t see enough demand, but yeah. We’re, I

Natali:

Believe you should. Cuz Etsy grew a lot and it’s great. It’s really–

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. So what’s your strategy with those tags at the bottom,

Natali:

You need to change them all the time. Like you test them for example, for a couple of weeks, and then you need to change at least a couple of them and see if this increases your traffic. You can also run Etsy ads and Etsy ads work based on your tags, these keywords, tags, and your title. Yeah. So now you can turn off some keywords from ads, but yeah, that’s how it works. What you put in your tags and what you put in your title, that’s where it gets keywords.

Bradley Sutton:

How are you choosing the keywords that you’re rotating in and out? Are you using your Amazon keywords? Are you looking at your competitor’s search terms or what are you doing?

Natali:

I do use other tools. That’s what I don’t wanna call.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. I’ve used a couple of Etsy tools too.

Natali:

Where you can find some keywords also, yeah, I do look at what competitors use on their tags. Etsy shows only a few before Etsy was showing all their tags. Now it shows only a few of them. Etsy also shows you if you scroll down, it also shows what keywords people used when they were looking for this type of product. Etsy kind of gives you this example and I’m checking competitors, and titles. So mostly it’s title tags. And these recommendations recently, Etsy started ranking your description as well before it was not paying attention to a description at all recently just like months ago or something, they started paying attention, and Etsy’s ranking really good on Google. So it’s important to have a good description for Google ranking cuz Etsy gets good traffic from Google.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, cool. I like it. There’s some stuff that you mentioned right there that I’m gonna have to go into my own Etsy accounts. I don’t think I’ve ever changed my search terms or my main keywords there, but, but I’m gonna have to take a look at that. I really like that. All right. Well and Natali, it was great to talk to you again and I definitely wanna follow up next year to see, see how this new gift set thing has been working for you and see how you’ve grown, your, your Amazon Etsy, and Shopify business about the Google ads that she was talking about. Guys. I don’t know, in a couple of days, there’s gonna be a Bigger, Better Launch at Helium 10 that we do every month and there just might be something that might be along the same lines. Natali had no idea. I didn’t tell her to say that she has no idea what we’re what I’m talking about here, but there might be something that Helium 10’s coming out with that can help with some of what she’s talking about. So look out for that guys. If you’re listening to this live when we drop this on the 20th, wait two days and see what we got cooking for you anyways, Natali, thank you so much for coming on here and we’ll see you later.

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