🍭 Treacle Thursdays from Seller Candy (4/11/21 issue) 🍬

Dear Buddy,

I do hope you're all doing well. November has arrived and, in typical fashion, the over-the-top sparkly Christmas decorations have started springing up and the dreary crooning of Abba's 'Happy New Year' (a hallmark of SE Asia) is wafting through every shop with a sound system.

This is a good news, bad news situation. The bad news is we're only a few days in to the 3-month countdown to some blessed relief from 'jolly' music.

The good news, though; tis' the season to be jolly-well smashing your sales goals out of the park.

Let's do some news!

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool."

- Richard Feynman

Bezos butts heads with Helium 10

We all know there are sets of tools out there which are pretty essential for both aspiring and experienced sellers. Helium 10 is just such a tool, among many others of course. They have become synonymous with Amazon product research and a load of other useful features.

Not content with someone else making money, Jeff has decided to add the Product Opportunity Explorer for brand registered sellers. While it's only in beta testing currently, it seems like it's going to be pretty effective if used correctly. The data is first-party, so it should be more accurate. Whether or not this is the case remains to be seen.

"Product Opportunity Explorer was developed with product research and development in mind. Sellers can assess the likelihood of a new brand gaining traction with customers, estimate the cost of competing in a product niche, and forecast sales potential.

Product Opportunity Explorer was announced at Amazon Accelerate and will be broadly available in 2022."

Taking another peek Behind the Stone

Time for another podcast! A few weeks back, John joined Rob from the Behind the Stone podcast to talk about solving some of the more complex issues that pop up on Seller Central.

We gave Rob a behind-the-scenes look at the platform we use to manage all of the tasks that get sent our way and some of the processes we use to get things fixed faster than you might expect.

They've done a great job with the production - it's rare to see chapters on a YouTube video. This one is definitely worth watching if you're curious about how things work over here at Seller Candy. Check it out below!

New external traffic rules could see hike in PPC costs

Big news has come down the funnel 'clarifying' rules in the Seller Code of Conduct regarding rebates, coupons and other external marketing incentives. Amazon say that things like two-step urls, super urls, funnels, treasure hunts and search-find-buy schemes, as well as off-Amazon discounts and rebates, are unfairly manipulating their own internal sales ranking systems.

This is a big deal. It's true that they do boost ranking by driving external traffic and doing all sorts of naughty things like incentivizing reviews. Great for sellers, especially the ones who aren't using these tactics to try to get ahead...but I don't really get it.

From their perspective, sellers are driving people who may otherwise have not bought a product on Amazon to buy it on Amazon at no cost to themselves.

For the sellers, this is one more thing to be wary about. We can be pretty sure they're not going to be able to catch everyone - the overseas sellers with hundreds of accounts will be more than happy to take the risk, and even more than happier with the fact Amazon has eliminated their competition for them without them having to lift a finger or spend an extra dollar.

So, why do we think they're 'clarifying'? Could it be because it's going to increase on-platform PPC competition which will massively boost their ads income? I'll let you decide!

Door to FBA, the right way

Logistics is a tricky business and it only seems to be getting harder, more confusing and less reliable given all of the shipping issues we're seeing at the moment.

You know how it goes - you're shipping from overseas where you've sourced your product and spoken to 10 different freight forwarders. You finally land on one that sounds reliable, when the quote they gave you suddenly didn't include shipping to port. Or their fees. Or loading. Or actual shipping.

Finding an honest agent who gives and honest price is hard, and it's nearly impossible to find one who offers door to FBA delivery with EACH LEG broken down in to steps and priced individually. That's where ExFreight come in.

They've developed an awesome product that gives you instant, free, accurate quotes for land, air, and sea shipping with itemized prices and timeframes. They even handle the customs clearance if you're a foreign importer!

Full disclosure: we don't get anything from this recommendation, they just have a great product that nobody else is offering.

That's it for this week. Sorry, it's a bit late, I dozed off.

Have a great end to the week and may your listings be blessed with many visitors!

Rich

Partnership Manager and drowsy newsletter writer at Seller Candy